BARRINGTON — After four students attending a high school dance turned out to be so drunk they became ill, officials say they will be taking a fresh look at whether to require everyone to pass an alcohol breath test before future dances.

Checking all students and their guests for even small amounts of alcohol on the breath has become standard procedure in some school systems. After Seekonk inaugurated such a system nearly two years ago, it has not had an alcohol-impaired student show up at a dance.

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Barrington police Chief John LaCross, who said he is “hoping to sit down with the school administration after the holiday season and see what their thoughts are.”

Principal John Gray said mandatory breath tests “are one possibility” after the Dec. 12 incidents.

The high school already has devices that can scan for alcohol, but they are only used if the school has a reasonable suspicion that a student might be impaired.

In communities such as Seekonk, the administration doesn’t wait for an impaired student to do something that sparks suspicion. Everyone is screened privately before they can enter the dance.

“It’s been working out great,” said principal Marcia McGovern, formerly of William E. Tolman High School in Pawtucket, who admitted having some initial reservations about the practice. “The kids are used to it, it’s easy, it’s just part of the evening, we’re really fast at doing it, and we know the kids are not coming to the dances impaired.”

“I think it makes a statement,” she said.

The number of students and guests who have shown up with alcohol on their breath in the two years the Breathalyzer-type devices have been in use: zero.

“They are not foolish enough to come,” McGovern said.

The system has been used for so long in other Massachusetts communities, she said, it’s not considered news anymore.

If a similar system were to be adopted in Barrington, which has had more than its share of student-related alcohol tragedies and has been doing other things to try to combat substance abuse, it won’t be because officials in the community are rushing into it.

Gray, Barrington’s principal, said the two incidents at the winter dance, where four students became sick, were an anomaly.

(Just before the dance, the police had to help a fifth high school student who showed up at the local Dunkin’ Donuts too intoxicated to stand.)

“It’s been a while since we’ve had to send a kid home [from a dance],” Gray said. “And when you have multiple kids like this, it was disappointing to say the least.”

Kathleen Sullivan, the town’s substance abuse coordinator, said some residents have questioned how students who were so intoxicated got into the dance in the first place.

The four may have consumed so much hard liquor so fast, “at the door they look sober. But after a while, the alcohol’s taken effect and suddenly they’re sick,” she said.

“It’s difficult to know how we can make these dances safer, if we have them at all,” Sullivan said. “But clearly, this was not safe.”

School Committee chairman Jim Hasenfus and Schools Supt. Robert O. McIntyre said any decision will be largely in the hands of Gray and his staff.

“We don’t want to do something just for the sake of doing something,” Gray said. “We want to make sure it’s the right thing to do, and it addresses the problem.”

gemery@projo.com