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.
Wrong. ONE girl broke the rules. She claimed that the other supplied the drugs but none was found on her.
Clearly you not only think that the 4th Amendment is not worth toilet paper but that innocent until PROVED guilty is not a valid concept either>
Not only have you justified the atrocious treatment of a young girl, you've declared her guilty without the benefit of a trial with no evidence.
Do you always so favor the complete trashing of the basic freedoms and rights of the citizens of this country?
“The kind of person who would go from uncorroborated accusations straight to strip searches should be parking cars for a living;”
Not my car, although I will exercise my baseball bat on them.
They should not be breathing.
They're sick, twisted perverts along with all of those who support them.
Second, she was asked to remove her outer garments only.
Third, her privates were never examined, much less "closely".
They pulled her undergarments away from her body and her genitals were exposed. That's far more "closely" than she ever should have been subjected to.
Fourth, this was done privately in front of two women, one of them the school nurse.
What medical reason did the nurse have for strip searching her? Was she in obvious discomfort? Was she not alert and breathing? Why would a nurse strip a student for no valid reason?
And fifth,they had reasonable suspicion that she was concealing drugs.
Then they need to get a search warrant and do it properly, in the presence of her parents and their attorney. Strip searching a child is molestation.
To call this a "rape" is a insult to every woman who has been raped and diminishes the meaing of the word.
Her mind and innocence was raped as surely as her body could have been. And I'd wager that the effects would be as long lasting.
They had no right and no reason to subject her to this. If they thought she was carrying drugs then they should have had a warrant and done it properly. Since they did it with no authority they raped her.
A dimwit is someone who continually makes the same dense mistake; a dimwit doesn't value knowledge to the extent he does not pursue it. That hardly describes a majority of public school teachers.
Parking a car might very well be too good a job on them. But these are the kind of people robert supports for some reason. What can I say? He must really enjoy cheering for the underdog, because I can't see how you can call yourself a conservative and back what this administrator did.
I'm right there with you. People who groove on authority for authority's sake are among the worst people on this planet. Obviously they're overcompensating for the lack of something else, and while the rest of us can enjoy a good chuckle over that, it's not funny when something like this happens.
That just can't help but leave a mark on that 13-year-old girl. How this administrator's "creep radar" didn't go off when he thought this thing was the right thing to do, I'll never know.
Actually, I said most. The 30 to 40 percent of teachers who won't send their kids to public school are the smart minority.
How do you define "dimwit"? (You used the word first to describe some homeschoolers) I would define "dimwit" as someone who ranks near the bottom of the class. (see post 218)
From that same link: "...the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that in Philadelphia, “half of the district’s 690 middle school teachers who took exams in math, English, social studies and science in September and November failed.” Notice: half of the currently-certified teachers failed the relatively easy state teaching test but are still teaching in the classroom!"
A dimwit is someone who continually makes the same dense mistake; a dimwit doesn’t value knowledge to the extent he does not pursue it. A dimwit, for example, wouldn’t even bother taking the SATS or aspire to go to college or law school. A dimwit is often oblivious to his or her dimwittedness. Literally, a dim wit.
I agree with you. There is certainly something really wrong with this whole story. That principal needs to be fired . I would get rid of the nurse too & any other adult who didn’t have the common sense to say this is going too far. I feel very sorry for this girl & if it was my child she wouldn’t set foot inside that school again. I would be suing for all kinds of damages.
Great point.
You mean it's okay that they're dimwits?
about the only thing the SAT attempts to predict is how well someone might do in his or her freshman year in college
SAT scores are also a pretty good proxy for IQ. People on the left tail of the bell curve should not be teaching children.
I agree. Most schools do require it. Our Catholic K-8 school and our public high school require a note for ANY meds. My eldest couldn’t use her inhaler herself, could keep it on her of course, but had to go to the nurse’s office whenever she needed it (catholic grade school). In her public high school, as long as she has a note on file, she can use it in her classroom. The latter makes sense to me because she only uses it during an attack. Also, by the time she was in 5th grade, I told her to just leave the room and use it in the girls room. I see the point, the nurse wanted to make sure she was having one, etc. I figured by the time she was in 5th grade, she knew herself. The do that for ALL script meds. And, they’re not even allowed advil or motrin or tylenol OTC - it has to be in the original bottle (same with scripts) and kept in the nurse’s office.
The public high school is fine with the inhaler being used by the teen themselves. however, they aren’t allowed to carry ANY OTC meds or script meds on them (other than the inhaler). My soph was sick, migraine or serious headache so I sent her to school with motrin OTC but she didn’t leave the house with it because she didn’t want to get caught and get in trouble. I told her to just go to the ladies room and take it but no...
Bottom line, what was done to this 13 yr old is criminal and before I sued the district I would have been arrested for assaulting whomever did that to my kid.
To repeat a famous Buckley quote, I will not insult your intelligence by assuming that you actually believe what you just said, because what you have said is the most pathetically ignorant, illogical and indefensible statement I have ever read. First, the logically exclusionary "ALL" states more than you could possibly know. It means you would personally have to examine each and every academically succesfull person and determine whether as a child he was homeschooled, a practical impossibility.
Second a lot of academically successful people went to private schools and were not home schooled at all.
Third, as a matter of fact, the vast majority of academically successful children go to public schools. This is simply a matter of statistics, since the vast majority of children in the US attend public schools, and there are many fine public schools, schools that are as good as any private school in the country. ANY! Even in mediocre schools there are excellent and dedicated teachers and so some students will beat the odds of mediocrity and succeed. Finally, there are a lot of brilliant or capable individuals who learn readily regardless of the quality of the environment, and they succeed anyway. Again the vast majority of these students attend public schools simply as a matter of statistics.
You go on to say:They will begin to compare the home life of the academically successful homeschooled child and that of the academically successful institutionalized child.
But such cannot be because you said that ALL academically successful students are homeschooled.
By the way, I have been a health professional nearly all my adult life
In other words you are not a medical doctor, explaining that you do not have the experience of dealing with the vast number of brilliant and talented professionals who were schooled before college at public schools.
it depends on whether or not you are a government teacher or someone sucking a living off the government school teat.
And your guesses are entirely wrong. It is a simple reality that folks have to get used to, that while there are many advantages to non-public education, many many brilliant and talented invididuals have attended public schools all of their lives, and have some distinct social advantages as a consequence including a better understanding of how to survive and get ahead in impersonal institutions, and the sociology of dealing with and finding friends among a diverse group of folks.
Finally, I think your position is immoral. Given that the vast majority of people must go to public schools because of practicalities, the right thing to do is to hold government officials feet to the fire to ensure that public schools are as good as they possibly can be. Letting these officials off the hook by stating that folks have other options, options they may not actually have, is a soft way out.
I agree with you. I would be on the cell phone on the way to the school calling my lawyer & praying that I wouldn't go ballistic. Once there I would try my very best to just get my child out of there. I might be able to hold my temper but Sassy's daddy wouldn't. I hope this girl was not put back into this school.
I’m still reading the thread :)
Was it you who said you were in NJ? If so, that’s where we are too. If not, I’m blaming it on being tired :)
Oh, I know what you mean. My husband would flip. I wouldn’t tell him until I stormed the school and blasted everyone first. I figure I’d have a better shot at getting off easier for assault than he would.
I’m shocked a school would do this knowing the lawsuits that would follow.
Wow! Well said.
This is not just nanny-staters on the left, but sick enablers of child molesting authoritarians on the right, like RobertPaulsen.
That's illegal and against FR rules to advocate violence.
But seriously, don't you think the best sanction against schools is to pull the kids out? Not only does it benefit the kid but the school loses a lot of federal financial assistance when the student body diminishes.
Frankly I don't believe schools can be reformed. Schools are dominated by an insane, leftist teacher's union, the most powerful political lobby in America, that does not want to be reformed.
OK. So you said what I (and probably everyone else) was thinking.....
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