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.
Funny ;)
Hey, I ain’t a Jersey Girl (except when it suits me), didn’t grow up here. I’m a South Philly girl. Not too sure I should be proud of that, lol.
I’m teasing. My girls ask me, well the teens do, if they have accents. They don’t sound like me that’s for sure. And my husband has no accent whatsoever. It’s weird. They all tease me about how I say certain words (like coffee, etc). I think they sound weird.
If LEOs are needed at schools today- then get them in there and let them do the job. School officials need to be worrying about doing their job- they haven't been doing such a bang up job of educating the students so they just don't need to be expanding their job into other areas.
Your two masters degrees trump my measly one masters! Wasn't any of the magna, summa or anything cum laudes either. I had to work full time while in college and did some partying too. EE is pretty tough, even if you aren't working and partying.
What's "yada yada yada" is that some local lingo?
Generalizations suck :)
Indeed, they do.! Indeed, they do!
Uh, I don't live in MA. I was just sending you and Twink there to save you from NJ.
Hunting is good in Ohio, too. We hunt deer, squirrel, ducks and liberals. Limited season on the first three, year-round for liberals. You can use automatics on the liberals, because they're considered vermin/pests. ;-)
Thanks, you want me to move where the perverted judges give no sentences to pervs & you aren’t even going to be my neighbor? shaking my head!
Jersey, Philly, makes no difference to me. I bet your accent is cute. Do you sound like “Rocky?” I don’t have an accent being from flyover country.
I want you to move away from me, that’s the point! I’m scared of the armed guy on your profile page! LOL
You think he armed? You should see my guns....lmao!
Just kidding of course. Check my tag.
Um, you were an engineering major. I think you trump me, lol. I would not have survived that course schedule.
Catholic school for 13 years then Penn State. ;)
I am a rockin’ teacher. And yes I follow the curriculum but there’s nothing like closing the door and teaching the real stuff. Hey, the libs do it, I figure the conservatives (and factual info) should have equal time.
I worked all through college and partied too. It can be done, as you know. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough for it not to impact my grades - I had to get serious, lol.
Yada yada I think is a tv reference made famous by Elaine on Seinfeld. Yada yada means curse words to me.
Believe me, your EE degree trumps my two masters.
I’d like to see your guns, weapons not flesh arms. I plan to post a photo of myself armed on my profile soon. New tag.
Bah. Too cold in Ohio. And no beaches/ocean.
But I do like the shooting libs thing. Gosh, I think I hate liberals.
I also like just shooting. I wanted to shoot the nasty squirrel family eating and invading my house but my husband wouldn’t let me. He wanted me to hit them with a broom or stick. He forbade me to shoot them. He said I’d get arrested. So I made him handle it when he got home from work. He was so close to shooting the little rodents himself. It was funny :)
How disappointing! I was hoping for company in the small but growing "publicschooled but successful" pinglist.
And yes I follow the curriculum but there’s nothing like closing the door and teaching the real stuff.
You don't teach that evil stuff in the curriculum do you? You know, the agenda stuff?
I am pretty smart (beaming), even though I was partially publicschooled.
We conservatives probably tend to teach our children to respect authority, to be polite and well-mannered, and to behave well. We have to remember to add that they shouldn't blindly trust authority and that it's OK to question authority.
I've always told my eldest son, "Adults aren't perfect. Always question authority... firmly but politely." That probably sounds like liberal advice to many conservatives, but considering stories like this one, I think that's what we should say. (Now I have to remember to give that advice to my other children. I don't remember ever telling them that.)
I don’t have an accent TYVM. Rocky sounds like an illiterate who got hit in the head too much. My Dad would call him punch drunk.
I don’t have an accent! I sound normal, everyone else sounds weird.
I bet you sound like a hick with that twang thing. Not that anything is wrong with that. It’s kinda hot.
Wrong, oh geography-challenged one. Check your map. Ohio has over one hundred miles of beach on Lake Erie.
But I do like the shooting libs thing. Gosh, I think I hate liberals.
We're good there!
I also like just shooting. I wanted to shoot the nasty squirrel family eating and invading my house but my husband wouldn’t let me.
You can't shoot in NJ. With the wall-to-wall people, you're bound to hit somebody.
Great Tag line... I love it!!!
Well, I’m catholic schooled til college successful list, lol.
But my kids are public high school (catholic k-8) schooled and oldest rocked her SATs, I’m thinking scholarship money plus her weighted gpa is off the charts. NHS and all that. And the soph, same honors/AP schedule (also a vb player) is being inducted into the French honor society (RME). She’s close to speaking fluent French. Cracks me up. And I’m like, talk freakin English to me. She and my husband have conversations in French. So then I start talking in Italian and it ticks them off.
Evil stuff? Hah. We all joke about Global Warming and the Homo agenda. And no, I don’t teach the homo stuff in a positive light. We;re talking high school kids. They know what’s up, lol. A few, very few, fall for it and join the homo/hetero club. But like college, learned to work the system, and don’t say anything without facts and even with them, there’s always ways around it all. The kids lead all those discussions and teens ain’t stupid.
You’re EE. A whole lot smarter than me :)
“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.”
I have two daughters. Someone would be collecting their teeth from the office floor.
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