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.
Want to start a pool?
Either mojave is rp or another public school principal.
What about it, Mojave? What do you do for a living?
Conga-line? The bizarre fantasies coming to light in this thread are amazing.
What does it say on my homepage?
How do you know RP wasn’t banned instead of suspended?
My fence would keep ya out.
So we can ask you the same question we asked rp.... If this is OK with you, then I take it you wouldn’t object if some half-witted school nurse of company nurse strip searched you on some other employees baseless accusation?
What difference does it make?
Are you a nurse?
The only thing you’re stepping in is your own feces. You’re stinking up the forum with your semantic BS that makes a point that no one considers germane to the discussion or relevant to a civilized mind. Don’t stop though. We all need an example now and then of people who are just wasting air.
Your insults are growing less coherent.
No you didn't shame me at all.I've read other posts of yours. Its a game with you & your buddy rp. I've seen you do this on threads. Besides I am polite. It would be a bigger step if you would answer some questions that have been asked of you...
Twisted, just twisted.
Since when?
Good memory. I had forgotten all about that jerk. Which is appropriate.
Anyone can read back and see this.
You're a piece of work.
Er deceive.
You keep repeating the facts as if we didn't read them or don't understand them. But we did. We got this point. Had there been physical contact we would not be awarding from each of the potential defendants $1M but rather that they go to jail for the rest of their lives, locked up with societies most violent offenders.
The difference is not a disagreement over the facts, but that most of us are outraged by what did happen, what actually happened, and you appear to think it is just ok. Well we don't, not based on fantasized facts, but based on the real facts as they are actually reported.
This is not an argument about what happened, but about the correct sanctions against the statist perpetrators.
There's been some pretty strange fantasies posted here today.
Wouldn’t need a fence ...I wouldn’t come near you. Anyway you wouldn’t want us for neighbors. Trust me. Eyes rolling here.
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