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.
What is the fine for ibuprofen?
Please, please I'm begging you to change your mind. Do you really want to see darth vader ginsburg naked? That would be cruel and inhumane punishment to the people assigned the grisly task of doing the search. (I have to go gouge out my mind's eyes now)
do a more respectable job?
Please leave bill clinton out of this.
Not at all. Parents must do what they must do, and private school or homeschooling are viable options. But neither of those are realistic options for 90% of the public who are stuck with public schools and so the question for a conservative is, what do we do?
Do we, as this individual do, suggest that this is simply a matter of individual parenting, and while we might express our regrets at the misfortune it is somewhat deserved and not really our concern?
Or, do we express our outrage at the continual erosion of rights, liberties, and in this case fundamental God-given decencies. The individuals who have placed these school administrators in the same category as child molesters got it about right, and I think a private suit against them as individuals for their behavior is just about right. Get them before a jury of their peers and let them decide.
She was raped. Pure and simple. The only think missing was penetration and that doesn't always happen in lesbian rape anyway.
The perps need to be dealt with as rapists.
For Advil? Your lack of proportion on this outrage is simply astonishing. This is not trying to balance the well-being of the greater community against individual rights. We are talking about constraining the untrammeled powers of the state in a matter of what should shock folks as an immoral outrage.
Thanks very much for the ping. OUTRAGEOUS! Thanks to all posters.
Makes no difference you say? The school, even with a tip, had no right to search the student? OK.
And when your child ends up in the emergency room because of the Ecstasy pills they got from Savana, and you find out that the school had information that Savana was selling these pills to students and did nothing, you'd just shrug your shoulders and say, "That's the price we pay for freedom"?
Why do I doubt that? Why do I think you'd sue the school out of existence?
Yes. Why is it the educators are protected from the consequences f behavior that would land another person in jail, probably for life and have then branded as a sex offender definitely for life?
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Exactly!
Can you image what would happen if this occurred at summer camp, private school, or church youth group?
The owners of the summer camp, the private school principals and teachers, and the minister would be facing criminal charges.
Down on the “Animal Farm” government school brown shirts get to live in the farmer’s house. The rest get prison.
Oink! Oink!
Me, too. Anyone who gives or sells illegal drugs to my children is in for a world of hurt.
That IS what you meant, right?
“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.”
And the indoctrination is moving along nicely.
A 13-year-old girl would be more comfortable stripping in front of her father (or step-father in many cases) rather than a female school nurse?
You want to re-think that?
We conservatives have to band together and teach our young kids to stand up to this sh*t; otherwise, our country is doomed. Such blind obedience to authority is absolutely sickening.
That's never going to happen. Face it.
Bull$hit. Pure and simple.
What if she had "pulled her bra out and to the side and shook it" and big anvil with "Acme" stamped on it fell out and hit the Road Runner on the head? Makes about as much sense based on the facts as your supposition.
God bless you, Bobby---you're Free Republic's best grenade thrower.
Right, so I’d be a good concentration camp guard because I believe there’s a difference between strip-search and rape? I forgot, I’m not dealing with people who can keep things in the appropriate perspective. I suppose shoplifting is the same as carjacking and bank robbery with you as well eh?
There really comes a time when NO education is better that attending the government indoctrination camps. I **seriously** mean this. We have reached this point.
ALL educationally successful children are homeschooled. If they are institutionalized for their education, this home acquired education is called "after-schooling". If conservative parents are the parents of an academically successful institutionalized child, it is because they homeschooled ( "afterschooled") the child and they or the child is now old enough to be educating himself already. The institutionalization is merely a waste of the child and parent's time.
If the conservatives are using government schooling as babysitting, then shame on them! If they somehow they managed babysitting costs when the child was a preschooler, then they can manage babysitting with the older child.
As you drive down the freeway, please note the very expensive new cars and trucks on the road. Every one of these parents can afford to downgrade their lifestyle and educate their children in a private school or hire tutors. Please glance up on the hill. Please note the mini-mansions. These are people who absolutely can afford to privately school, privately tutor, or homeschool their children.
I was skiing a few times this winter in the West. Everyone of those parents on these expensive ski vacations can afford to get their children OUT of the government schools.
Conclusion: There are plenty of conservatives using the government schools who are doing it for babysitting ( so they accumulate more material goods), or because they do not want to downsized their standard of living by having mom stay at home or by paying for tutors or private school even if she is already home.
Do we, as this individual do, suggest that this is simply a matter of individual parenting, and while we might express our regrets at the misfortune it is somewhat deserved and not really our concern?
Personally, my husband and I give 1% of our income to our church scholarship fund. This is in addition to tithing. Imagine how many poor and middle class kids could escape the government schools if all conservatives did this?
Then when incidents such as this strip search occur conservatives need to make a very big stink whether or not they have children in the government schools.
We should demand that our legislators and police hold government school brown shirts to the exact same standards of behavior as private citizens.
Or, do we express our outrage at the continual erosion of rights, liberties, and in this case fundamental God-given decencies. The individuals who have placed these school administrators in the same category as child molesters got it about right, and I think a private suit against them as individuals for their behavior is just about right. Get them before a jury of their peers and let them decide.
The best way to punish the government school brown shirts is to eliminate their job! Work like crazy to close these kiddie prisons DOWN!
And,,Yes!,,,I agree personal malpractice suits are justified in this and similar cases.
In order to stop this kind of thing from happening again, parents need to get together and tell the school board that it's OK for 13-year-olds to be exchanging drugs with each other. The school has no right to prohibit this private, harmless behavior nor to search any student any time for any reason.
The parents are the taxpayers. They're the employers. They need to let the school know what will not be tolerated by them.
Nah, they won't get too vexed over that silly statement.
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