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.
Check the bottom of my profile page.
Check the one at post 309
Yes, I know. But Lake Erie isn’t the ocean and its beach isn’t the shore. It’s a LAKE. Not the ocean. Duh.
Heh, geography challenged I ain’t. Try again.
Lake Erie. Presque (sp) Island. Hubsand showed me his *beach* growing up. It isn’t the jersey shore that’s obvious ;)
I hate rodents. I want them dead and I want to shoot them. A gunshot would alert police. And even with my police family, I’d be F***d.
I’m going to bed. It’s late. I’ll just tell my students tomorrow that weird people kept me awake and reinforce that all things online are bad. It’s not my fault. They’d probably understand that victim mentality ;)
Fortunately, it’s an easy day tomorrow.
Rockin’ sun glasses. Hot gun too.
I have to go to bed. You people are a bad influence on me.
Can I sue for lack of sleep?
You're right about that, Lake Erie shores don't have all the medical waste and raw sewage found on Jersey shores.
I’m going to bed. It’s late.
Ahh, wimpy Jersey/Philly girl.
Bite me.
I’ve been to Lake Erie (Presque Island). Not impressed. You been to the Jersey shore?
LOL, I am NOT. Wanna test that? ;)
Ok. I’m wimpy tonight. It’s way past my bedtime. Thank heavens for coffee cos I’m gonna need it.
Nite :)
Get Bent!
Rescue inhalers only one half mile away for what sounds like exercise induced asthma. This is the brilliance of zero tolerance. /s
Good on you on having such smart kids.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My kids are normally bright. They are not any smarter than children of the posters on this board.
Ok,,,I see that you focused on my first sentence and did not read one word further.
Let's compare the home lives of the academically successful institutionalized child and academically successful homeschooler:
* Both have parents that value education.
* Both have parents that read to them from an early age. In the process of doing this their children are gently introduced to phonics, even if the parents are unaware of doing this.
* Both have parents that have books and magazines in the home.
* In each household the parents of young schooled aged children check the child's homework for neatness, completion, and comprehension.
* In the child's early years, both the homeschooled and institutionalized child's parents have regular homework hours.
* In both the homeschooling and institutionalized child's homes the parents are mindful that the child has memorized their basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math facts.
* TV and video games are supervised and controlled.
* The parents see that child has enriching out of school activities such as karate, music lessons, soccer, baseball, community theater, and scouting.
* The parents describe taking their children to museums and planing vacations that have educational value.
* As the child grows older, both the homeschooler and institutionalized child take on responsibility for their own homework.
* At the first sign of difficult both sets of parents ( homeschooling and institutionalized ) seek out specialized tutors.
As conservatives think about the similarities between the homelife of academically successful homeschool and institutionalized children, they will begin to see that the real learning is occurring at home. The real teaching is being done by the parents in both homes. As the child grows older, both the homeschooled and institutionalized child are teaching themselves at home. What a brick and mortar school is doing is sending home a curriculum.
I fully admitted in my previous posts that my observation s are anecdotal. These are **personal** observations. Perhaps as this idea that academically successful children are homeschooled ( even if instituitonalized) will catch the attention of a researcher. Perhaps those who work against compulsory government schooling can use this idea in their quest for educational freedom for all children.
I can tell you, that I don't post for your benefit or the benefit of any government school defender...But...Thanks anyway for providing a backboard against which I and others can bounce around ideas and refine talking points.
Can an exception exist to the above? Yes! But...I **personally** have never met one.
OMG! Watch out! robertpaulsen is actually supporting his opinions with facts! From the court case itself!
How dare he do that! He should realize that we only go by our "feelings" on these kinds of threads. He's such a party-pooper.
No, I wouldn't say that. They found the drugs on Marissa. They expected to find at least the same drugs on Savana.
I don't believe the school had any preconceived notions about what they would find, and it's my guess they did not rule out other drugs. But there's nothing in the article to suggest that the school conducted the search only because they thought they'd find other illegal drugs (like LSD or Ecstasy).
If the school has evidence that gives them reasonable suspicion that a student has drugs prohibited by school policy, then, yes, I support a search. It’s more of a health and safety issue than order and discipline.
Hey, so now the only standard of evidence for a search is the expectation that you'll find something?
So anyone can make a flimsy allegation and that is sufficient to search? No need to evaluate the veracity of that evidence?
Guys like you are the grease that covers the slippery slopes.
Nope. I have fourth amendment rights.
"Do you seriously think like the principal that just because nothing was found that it wasn’t traumatic or humiliation for her?"
Her friend Marissa was searched exactly the same way. I read nothing about her trauma or humiliation. She's not suing the school.
Marissa said she got the drugs from Savana. They searched Savana's locker. They searched her backpack. No drugs. She had no pockets in her clothes. So, where were they?
The court found the seach justified.
Well, they do take after their dad, so ....
They didn't exist.
And anyone who either wasn't an authoritarian freak like yourself or who didn't have their cognitive functions hindered by zero-tolerance rules would have realized that there was a much higher probablity that Marissa was lying than the probability that Savana had Advils on her person. And under the Fourth, there was no cause for a search. At least the Fourth as it was written by the Founders and interpreted for years before the mindset of people like you infected our free society.
For you to say that with a straight face is the heights of hypocrisy. Every argument you have put forth on this thread is an overly-narrow selectively legalist justification for rampant erosion of the 4th, just as you continue work to undermine basic interpretations of the 2nd. So do us all a favor and don't EVER wrap the mantle of the Bill of Rights around your shoulders again. It makes me sick.
Exactly? You'd actually have to take the time to read the case and get all the facts. I know how much you hate that, preferring to rely on your feelings about the case, unencumbered by the truth.
I provided a link in my post #234. It went beyond a mere accusation by one student.
In the future, when you see an article like this, check the source and the author. I do.
Jacob Sullum is a big time, pro-drug Libertarian and so's his rag, Reason. He'll do anything to smear anti-drug efforts. You should know this by now. You've been around. Why do you take his word at face value?
Read the case and get back to me.
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