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The School Crotch Inspector - Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time
Reason ^ | April 2, 2008 | Jacob Sullum

Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.

It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.

Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.

Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.

The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.

"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.

When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.

Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."

The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.

© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: advil; arth; ashredux; authoritarianism; healthnazis; homeschoolingisgood; nannystate; publicschool; schooldiscipline; stripsearch; teens; twoequalsthree; wod; wodlist; zot
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To: 50mm
What if the uncorroborated accusation by druggie Marissa had been that Savana had put Advil in a personal cavity. Would you be okay with a cavity search in that case?

Of course not. What sort of society have we become if an uncorroborated accusation can lead directly to a cavity search?

141 posted on 04/03/2008 11:16:15 AM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: Hemingway's Ghost

The question was for RP. I pinged you.


142 posted on 04/03/2008 11:18:07 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: 50mm
The question was for RP. I pinged you.

Roger that. I'm sure Bob would be totally cool with it, though.

143 posted on 04/03/2008 11:20:11 AM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: Hemingway's Ghost
Roger that. I'm sure Bob would be totally cool with it, though.

We'll see about RP. I wouldn't. See post 140.

144 posted on 04/03/2008 11:22:35 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: AndyJackson

“But if your civil liberties are not safe in the public commons what will protect your civil liberties on your own property? “

The Second Ammendment grants you citizenship...
It is absence a man becomes a Subject to the state.


145 posted on 04/03/2008 11:25:10 AM PDT by mo
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To: mo

oops!

IN its absence man becomes a Subject to the state...

Ask any Brit....they’re clearly, by virtue of their gun laws and hypersurveillance of one another, Her Royal Majesty’s Subjects.


146 posted on 04/03/2008 11:27:16 AM PDT by mo
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To: 50mm

“I’d take the assault rap. It would be worth it. “

Ask for a jury trial, I for one would not convict you.


147 posted on 04/03/2008 11:29:45 AM PDT by driftdiver
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To: driftdiver
Ask for a jury trial, I for one would not convict you.

Mindreader!

148 posted on 04/03/2008 11:30:51 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: 50mm

Why do girls/women generally take advil? Isn’t it frequently for pain caused by their period? So this girl is supposed to be stashing advil in her crotch while she’s on her period and the principal then expects her to consume the advil? I don’t mean to be offensive here but this is amazing.

Not only is this school run by child molesters but its run by stupid socialists. No wonder so many children are failing to graduate from high school.


149 posted on 04/03/2008 11:33:40 AM PDT by driftdiver
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To: AndyJackson

While I understand YOUR sentiment for not “copping out” on keeping our freedoms in our public squares and institutions, I still don’t want the experiment to fight the system taking place on MY kids. (Hence I homeschool.)


150 posted on 04/03/2008 11:40:31 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: driftdiver
Why do girls/women generally take advil? Isn’t it frequently for pain caused by their period? So this girl is supposed to be stashing advil in her crotch while she’s on her period and the principal then expects her to consume the advil? I don’t mean to be offensive here but this is amazing.

Most schools require a note from the doctor to allow even nonprescription medication. That's beside the point. They still shouldn't search based on uncorroborated accusations.

151 posted on 04/03/2008 11:42:15 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: Hemingway's Ghost
That's never going to happen. Face it.

If people take their kids out of public schools and put them in private school or home school, the public schools will have to shut down. In some states, there are counties that don't have public schools. If people there can't afford private schooling the county gives them a voucher to attend a private school.

152 posted on 04/03/2008 11:58:05 AM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: robertpaulsen
...you'd just shrug your shoulders and say, "That's the price we pay for freedom"?

Why not? Why not have freedom as opposed to a police state? Why get kids acclimated to gestapo tactics when they should be taught to appreciate the bill of rights? Doesn't freedom mean anything to you? Do you think freedom is some abstract thing that we should do without for the sake of "safety"?

153 posted on 04/03/2008 12:03:44 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Dan Evans
If people take their kids out of public schools and put them in private school or home school, the public schools will have to shut down.

OR spend their alloted dollars on other sorts of Bravo Sierra. I understand the theory, I just don't see it happening in reality any time soon. Perhaps I'm being too myopic, however---I do live in Massachusetts, after all, the bastion of the public school system mentality.

154 posted on 04/03/2008 12:06:00 PM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: microgood; Gorzaloon

Nope. Boiling oil after a nice tarring and feathering. Low cholesterol oil, of course.


155 posted on 04/03/2008 12:18:52 PM PDT by dcwusmc (We need to make government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.)
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To: Dan Evans

Everyone should be able to deduct from their taxes, up to the amount spent per pupil in public school, the cost of the schooling of their choice.


156 posted on 04/03/2008 12:20:42 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: robertpaulsen
My question stands - what if the search had turned up drugs?

Then they would have turned up drugs. So what? They were looking for an ADVIL tablet.

You think this is necessary? These kids are going to leave school thinking that strip searches of citizens are perfectly fine. What kind of country do you want America to become?

157 posted on 04/03/2008 12:21:14 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Hemingway's Ghost
Homos don't frighten me. Not in the least.

What a stupid thing to say. We are talking about homosexuals having access to children. Are you telling me that you would have no problem with a homosexual tending to your kid in a locker room or on an overnight camping trip?

158 posted on 04/03/2008 12:29:48 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Hemingway's Ghost
I know people who homeschool who are complete dimwits; they have no business at all educating a dog, let alone their own children.

But these people will only fail at educating their own kids, not other people's children. Public schools systems have become so corrupt and dysfunctional that most public school teachers fall into the "dimwit' category.

159 posted on 04/03/2008 12:33:31 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Hemingway's Ghost
"An uncorroborated accusation from an unreliable source already in trouble with authorities .... Possession of Advil is now treated"

Advil Schmadvil. Leave it out of your argument. It could have been cocaine and you're saying she shouldn't have been searched based on the above. Fine.

I'm simply saying that decision would leave little Miss Drug Dealer in business and open up the school for future lawsuits. (You were told she was dealing drugs and you did nothing? You didn't even search her?)

160 posted on 04/03/2008 12:39:41 PM PDT by robertpaulsen
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