Jay Hughes of the Associated Press reports on the use of polygraph interrogations at Dunlap High School. For further reading on this story, browse the Polygraph News for Sep.–Oct. 2001. Excerpt:
DUNLAP, Ill. (AP) – One by one, the subjects were led into a room and hooked up to a polygraph machine.
The purpose: to determine whether the teen-agers violated Dunlap High School’s code of conduct by attending a party where alcohol was consumed.
Seven of the 10 students who submitted to the lie detector exams – all of them football players – flunked the questioning last month and were barred from competing in the first round of the state playoffs. Some of their parents wept when they learned their children had lied to them.
Dunlap High went to extraordinary lengths to get to the bottom of what was otherwise a routine case of teen-agers getting into trouble.
School Superintendent Bill Collier said it was the right thing to do to sort the guilty from the innocent: “It may look bad, it may sound bad, but it’s the fairest way.”
The investigation began after police broke up a party Oct. 6. Nobody was arrested, but officers took down the names of everyone present and traced the registration of all cars parked there. Their list of 15 athletes was turned over to school officials.
Three students admitted guilt when confronted. But many others claimed that they had left the party as soon as they realized alcohol was present. So school officials proposed the polygraphs.