Happy Birthday, Pandy!
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.
That rodent has been my trouble for years!
I’m outa here. I can’t even get the “post to” right I’m so tired!
Willow bark? ummm what would willow bark be doing in undies? Is willow bark for headaches? QQ
Thank you all for the fun!! hugs & prayers...I have been called to bed. Same thread tomorrow? hugs!
Happy Birthday, Pandy!
Yes, willow bark. That is where aspirin came from.
Nite, everyone. I’m cashing it in too.
Night, TE!
My IE crashed, and I couldn’t clink a toast with all of you!
Rest well, my friend. (IOW, sleep tight and don’t let the bugs bite!) ;-)
Night, ‘50’. I hope you have a good night’s rest, and wake up ready to have a FUN day! Hugs,
Drinkings ok, advil warrants a strip search.
Actually that is what is really frightening here, probably even more so than the strip search, which is bad beyond belief, that our so-called in loco parentis think that the word of a kid, in trouble, is worth anything. I mean what kind of dried up, acid-etched brain cavity (LSD - I mean), excuses for human beings are these so-called adults who never got caught filching a cookie just out of the oven where they had to cook up an excuse real quick to save their sorry butts from a really fearsome mom, who actually loved them and didn't mind SO MUCH so long as the kept it to one or two. And THEY claim THEY are the adults. SHEESH. They were never ever even kids.
My CIA code name was “PIZZA” as in Pizza Face, not PEZ.
Cute overload...
OK, Old movie stuff. I NEVER watch them unless I’m at my sister’s. She could quote most of them and always has them on.
Join the club.
Yea!! Birthday cake. Happy birthday, Pandy!
Say.... are all those little round things around the cake allowed? I mean, really, they look like they could be hiding advil, you know, disguised. We’ll have to strip them to find out.
Yes, but the song seems so appropriate for the pusillanimous authoritarianists.
Late night, but worth it.
Welcome to the party. It’s been really rocking here for the last few nights.
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