Trust, but verify

According to this article, the choir from a school from Millbury, Ohio, which is located about 15 miles southeast of Toledo, took a trip to perform in Chicago. The chaparones of the trip were a little concerned with the teenagers leaving their hotel rooms after curfew. Teenagers have certainly been known to do things like that on these kinds of trips. It's natural for schools to want to enforce the curfew to keep the students from getting into mischief. And in a city like Chicago, particularly for students who aren't from big cities, there are safety concerns as well.

The chaperones on this trip decided to take measure to make sure that students wouldn't break curfew and that those who did could be identified. So they sealed the doors to the hotel rooms with duct tape. While this would certainly allow them to identify which rooms had people who violated curfew, they apparently did it in a way that caused students to fear that they wouldn't be able to get out of the room in case of fire.

While school officials claim that students would have been able to break the duct tape and exit the room in case of emergency, at least one set of parents is considering suing over the incident because their son felt like he was trapped in the room.

I have to say, while I applaud the school's efforts to keep its students safe and out of mischief, I'm not sure that this was the best way to go about it.