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.
I checked the bang thread Bobby was on and there is no mention of him being ZOTted. He was the last post there. That means the banglisters are unaware. Who keeps the banglist?
I just want to know what particular thing set him off. I have a couple of other targets in mind.
I thought about that later. Figured that was why older teachers were so mean.
No, I don’t think there is any ping list for that. Just keywords to find threads. They will find out soon enough.
In my middle school all the older male teachers I had used to drink. You could get away with anything. As long as you were quiet when they had hangovers they passed you.
The actual decision reads:
The search of Redding’s person was conducted by two employees who were of the same gender as Redding, and the search took place in the privacy of the school nurse’s office with the door securely locked. Cf. Beard, 402 F.3d at 606 (noting that “[t]he fact that the search[ ] . . . did not occur in the presence of only school officials, but rather in the presence of other students, . . . supports the conclusion that the search[ ] w[as] unreasonable”). Redding was not physically touched in any way during the search, and she was not asked to remove her bra or underwear.
It appears that the only child molesting that occurred was limited to your own fetid imagination.
BTW, the real Andrew Jackson was a man of courage. You need a new handle.
Sixth grade was the last year of grade school though and we were looking to raise cane as a last hoorah. We knew we were out of there the next year. There were four or maybe five of us who had been best friends since fourth grade or earlier all in one class. Giving us an idealistic first year male teacher was insane. Naturally, being sixth grade boys, we were insane.
Only a pervert would not consider this child molestation.
Only a pervert would imagine the molestation of a child that never occurred.
You'll spoil their fantasies by posting facts.
How did you know that they had a hangover? Did you smell their breath?
Was that the only reason?
(Don't blow smoke. Be ready to provide a source for your assertions.)
That doesn't make any sense, robert.
Your doppelganger can’t talk to you.
That is the only reason the article provides. Are you asking pandora to prove a negative?
You’re safe to attack him behind his back then.
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