langelgjm writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students' free speech at school-sponsored events that take place off school property. The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.' The Supreme Court's last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student's purse. Incidentally, the girl was found not to be in possession of any drugs, illegal or otherwise."
Yep. I would say it's only fair for schools to be allowed to strip search students if parents are allowed to skin teachers/administrators with rusty vegetable peelers.
Anything less is cause for revolution.
Actually, come to think of it, isn't this exactly what that part of your constitution about carrying guns is for?
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
Lots of people are assholes. Many sex offenders are assholes. Being an asshole should not be sufficient to cause us to throw away our principles to crucify them. In this case, by all means, charge them with any applicable crimes. However, I, and many others, object to sex offender registries because they make it difficult or impossible for individuals to successfully re-enter society, by barring individuals from living in many areas, and for effectively punishing them beyond the time they serve in prison. So no, sex offender registries should not exist, and nobody should be put on them.
While I tend to agree with you, if you're going to have people end up on registries for things that don't actually harm anyone in a meaningful way like streaking or having sex in semi-public places, surely people like these school officials who cause genuine harm to a minor by sexually humiliating them should be on the list.
If I had found out that some school official strip searched my kid, regardless of age or sex; the officials involved would never have made it to trial.
For those that didn't RTFA:
After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
School is supposed to be a place where kids are safe. When the solution is worse then the crime you have a system out of control.
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
No they shouldn't. Barred from working with children? Probably. But that's about the extent of it.
This incident shows incredibly poor judgment, and suggests that the morons involved got way too caught up in their "no drugs in school" policy, but it does not, in any way, indicate a likelihood of the perpetrators seeking to abuse children for sexual pleasure.
Cavalierly throwing people on the registry is how we got to where we are now, where peeing in the bushes gets you marked with the scarlet letter for life, and Georgia's even started throwing non-offenders on the list [ajc.com].
The registry is questionable enough in the first place; treating it lightly like this just makes it worse.
I'm glad that the Ninth Circuit had the insight to say that this was wrong, I only hope that the Supreme Court is picking this up so that they can more firmly put this in the "Not Allowed" category. Schools need to understand that these are not their children and that for anything more intrusive than a locker search the parents should be involved.
Agreed. Though technically(and legally) student is in the care of the school while at school, it is important to understand the distiction between this and something like a prison. Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights. I think it would be reasonable to argue a 4th ammendment violiation in this case. Posession of an over the counter medication is NOT by any means probably cause for a strip search. I mean, come on people use some common sense. Now if she was accused of having a kilo of cocaine, and there was sufficient evidence to support that claim, then call the freakin police and have her arrested. By no means whatsoever should she be strip searched on the premises, especially not by school administration.
I think it would be reasonable to argue a 4th ammendment violiation in this case.
It's not just an illegal search, it's a goddamned felony. If these assholes go free while someone like Charlie Lynch goes to jail, then the law in the USA is a complete joke.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday March 24 2009, @06:13PM (#27321307)
That's what I was thinking. If my daughter came home from school telling me she was strip searched by a school official or a police officer without a warrant, the first court case would be the one I would face for murder charges.
The fact that ANOTHER child, in ANOTHER INCIDENT, may or may not have overdosed on a drug, regardless of it's legality, has no bearing on THIS CASE. Holding that other incident out as a mitigating circumstance only confuses the issue at hand.
Yes, that is true as far as the legal system is concerned, but i would bet that to the school administrators, they were at the very least reminded of the previous incident. Humans connect things and their intentions probably came from a desire to prevent another overdose.
Thankfully, school administrators are still subject to "the legal system." As for their purported desire to prevent anything, the ends still don't justify the means.
The accusation was that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen, which is not OTC medication.
But I agree that the police should have been involved for any form of invasive search. There also shouldn't have been a zero-tolerance policy to begin with, as the enforcement of these often removes the gray area of judgment of when to enforce a policy and moves the gray area into how to enforce the policy, often erring on the side of draconian.
Either way, does it matter? The question when you are going to act on all laws/rules is, did anyone get hurt or their rights violated. If the answer is no, and someone wasn't acting recklessly (like going 50 in a 25 mph zone), then the law/rule should not be enforced or it should carry little to no punishment. In this case it is quite obvious the girl was not high on painkillers, wasn't selling them, and didn't even have solid evidence she even had them when she was accused. Such things should be dismissed with no consequence. A 13 year old should be perfectly allowed to carry ibuprofen, even prescription strength (which is only equal to like 3 regular pills) on their person especially if there was some need for them.
Just so you know... Prescription strength ibuprofen is 800mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
As opposed to OTC ibuprofen which is 200mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
i.e., if you have 4 advil, you have the equivalent of one prescription strength ibuprofen.
---
In ANY case, school administrators should not (and probably DO not) have the legal authority be able to strip search a minor. That's a police matter. And even then, I think the parents should be present.
Where I am, "prescription" ibuprofen is 600mg per tablet, or the equivalent of 3 OTC ibuprofen. I even had a doctor tell my wife who had neck pain after an accident, "I could write you a prescription for ibuprofen, but it is exactly the same as taking 3 over the counter ibuprofen, which you probably already have." So yes, there should be no such thing as "prescription" ibuprofen. And strip-searching someone who denies having ibuprofen on the basis of so-and-so said she got a couple pain relievers from her does violate all standards of reasonableness. So what if they DID find it on her? My daughter takes 4 different prescription meds -- I would insist that she has every right to carry these with her to school, and that the school has no right to confiscate them from her. After all, if she doesn't take them, she dies -- it is that simple!
Posession of an over the counter medication is NOT by any means probably cause for a strip search.
She did not have any drugs in her posession. All the school officials had as reason was the accusation of another girl who had been caught and was trying to shift blame.
But their attitude was clearly "guilty until proven innocent":
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.
"Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights.
I don't disagree with that. But all this focus on legalities (I'm tempted to go into my usual "slashdotters think too highly of their own legal expertise" rant) kind of misses the most important point: these school administrators humiliated a 13-year-old, all in the name of verifying that she wasn't "smuggling" some pills that aren't even for a drug of abuse! Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
Agreed. I grew up with Migraines. Pre- the wonderful better drugs we have now I needed to take massive amounts of Ibuprofen to keep them in check and hell-yeah I had it with me at all times including at school. "Prescription Strength" means 800mg = 4 over the counter pills = 1/2 what I needed to bring down a bad migraine.
Their mention of the "not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction" what.. she's a girl so we can strip search her? She's 13 so we can strip search her? She might, heaven-forbid, have *Advil* so we can strip search her?!?
"role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds"
I love how America has so many laws and yet regardless of how many patriotic movies it creates it still believes the constitution has limited application.
Exactly. "Zero tolerance" is newspeak for "zero common sense." Anyone who isn't capable of applying their own judgement instead of blindly following a rule in a situation like this is far too stupid to have anything to teach a child.
Exactly: zero tolerance = zero common sense. I agree with this, but how did this come about?
Look at the areas where "zero tolerance" has been applied - they are the areas most likely to have people unable to competently apply judgment. Removal of the grey areas assures that the same decision will be made every time for a given set of circumstances - essentially "dumbing down" the rules for those in authority.
Have we really fallen so far as to believe that we should follow leaders that need the rules "dumbed down"?
Is a teenager having a fucking ibuprofen such a monstrous and immediate security threat that we need to strip search her? Or was somebody just a little too eager to strip search a 13 year old? Hmm?
I wonder if the court would have upheld the 13-year old's right to strenously kick school officials in the balls for forcibly removing her clothing?
It seems to me that, since she *wasn't* found to be in possession of any drugs at all, she's in a good position to make somebody's life really, really uncomfortable for a while.
Now, now. No need to threaten violence. Just post wanted-ish posters with "Pedophile?" in the caption around their neighborhood... every time they move. Eventually they'll off themselves.
Don't forget, it wasn't just that it was prescription strength OTC medication (she could have taken a handful of "regular" pills for the same effect)
The entire thing was based on the accusations of another student. No one actually saw her with any pills of any kind. A strip search for what amounts to over the counter medication based on the accusations of another student.
If a student had accused the vice principal of the same thing, would they be expected to submit to a strip search?
Zero tolerance policies are the same as "I just don't want to make hard decisions" so instead you make f'ing stupid ones.
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
A "strip-search" performed by anyone other than a police officer acting with probable cause is a sexual assault.
People, including teens and children, have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary against such an attack, and should be trained to do so.
After some pervert principal gets his testicles crushed and his eyes gouged by a student he's trying to attack, perhaps we might see an end to this bullshit.
The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.'
So what could excessively intrusive have been in this case? Surgically cutting her open and checking all internal organs?
Maybe our legislators who are always so worried about sexual exploitation of children as an excuse to censor the internet and everything else, might want to look into whether prohibiting the government from forcibly stripping children naked shouldn't be a higher priority.
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
Strip searching is completely different from, say, sending a child to bed without dinner.
The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. Would not at all be interested in helping "open source software." Haven't you seen 12 year olds act like two year olds? And 22 year olds act like 12 year olds? If they don't get their way, they whine and cry and throw tantrums because they expect to get their way, because that's how it's happened all their life.
The world doesn't work that way. It is not incorrect to say I was spanked as a kid and I turned out [sic] OK. On the other hand, many people seem to think that if children's desires were just gratified more as a child, they wouldn't be so problematic. We are having more and more kids have everything the want, and it's been that way increasingly for a while now. Seen any improvements in "bad things" such as greed, poverty, violence, sexual assault, etc.?
I would venture to guess that school officials such as these two female ones that strip-searched a 13 year old girl based on an accusation from a kid (who, by the way, when faced with real consequences of his actions, thought he would just get out of it by lying - something some kids are spanked for and learn is not good. Hm...) are not accustomed to not getting what they want, and likely would have gotten quite mad if the girl had refused to do what they told her to. Authority "complexes" don't come from not having every desire fulfilled as a child. "Spoiled brats" are usually quite bossy and get quite angry when they don't get their way. Seems like that behavior continues into adulthood.
Curbing that behavior in a child is pretty important. It has nothing to do with dignity, it has to do with wanting the child to behave well and not simply float around, expecting (WRONGLY) everything to be his for the ordering. That is letting the child grow up in a lie. Very respectful of his dignity, I'm sure.
Wait. Not excessively intrusive in light of her age and sex? What the hell does THAT mean? Since when does a person's gender or age mean that a strip search is less intrusive? You're making somebody who's dramatically underage, BUT old enough to know what's going on, strip naked. If anything, the fact that she's young and female makes it MORE intrusive (I think the average boy would shrug it off better than a girl would; I might be wrong in that assumption, though). It sounds like whoever said that thinks young girls are worth less than other people, but I hope they're not actually saying that.
that "Zero Tolerance" policies are absurd. There is a reason why we have judge and juries. Laws do not apply evenly. Regardless of the policy, any reasonable person would see how stupid it was to trust another student's accusations and then harass a student with a good record over one pill of OTC pain relief.
If I was the girls father I would now be facing my own charges of assault and battery for beating the shit out of the school assistance principle and the two staffers who strip searched my daughter for suspicion of having a fucking aspirin.
"They didn't even look at my records," she said. "They didn't even know I was a good kid."
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.
"Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
While I also think it is irrelevant, that just sounds really bad coming from a school official. You stay class Safford, AZ school district.
Using the same logic the people conducting the strip search of a 13 year old student could very possibly be sex offenders then. Sure, they might not have a criminal record and aren't on the sex offenders register, but that just means they haven't been caught.
Anyone want to place bets the supreme court will agree with the state, and restrict a students rights?
After reading Morse v. Frederick, only John Paul Stevens understood the right for first amendment rights to protest illegal behavior. (aka Vietnam and medical marijuana as examples)
Chief Justice Roberts went along the normal "war against drugs" lie, that they had to punish the student to "SEND A MESSAGE"...
Justice Clarence Thomas viewed schools have no free speech and "Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."
/sigh
It's crazy. I think I understand the issue better than then most of the Supreme Court, the most educated, the best of the best? They agreed to strip a fundamental right away for a war on drugs, and to make a teachers job easier. To allow a child to be randomly strip searched without proper cause? To prevent protests in a non-disrupting behavior off school grounds? wow.. just wow...
Why am I always disagreeing with them on most issues. I talk to co-workers, family and friends, and we seem to be in the same beliefs and values. Yet, I read the Supreme Courts views and I disagree, most of the time. I very rarely agree with the court. Few times have I cheered decisions about cases. Take Lawrence v. Texas which effectively legalized being gay. And of course, Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas dissented. My favorite comment roughly (I cant find it) from Texas "We dont discriminate against Gays just Gay Sex", and a justice asked "What is the difference?"
I'll end this lengthy topic that means much to me with a Scala qoute.
"Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best... But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else." --Scalia.
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.
"Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
I would never want anyone from a school with this attitude to be involved in the education of my children.
Home schooling fucks up your social skills. We need good public schools.
No. Socializing children fucks up their social skills. Have you ever been a child before? You should remember what it was like. Children are not good at teaching each other morals or good social skills. What they do learn from each other is Human Nature, which isn't a very good thing to learn if you are being taught by human children. Go to a football game in England to see what socialization does.
And homeschooling keeps them away from all those stupid people during their formative years and makes them completely inadequately prepared for having to deal with the rest of the world when they're kicked out of the house. I've known too many homeschooled kids to think that it's socially beneficial for them. They're often taken advantage of, and trodden upon because they don't have the social skills to deal with bullies and assholes.
As the parent of 3 homeschooled children, I can tell you that such a generic statement is complete rubbish.
Yes, if the kids a locked away and never socialize, they probably won't have good social skills.
That situation does not represent the experience of many homeschooled kids. In any area where there are significant groups of homeschooled children, there will be organizations through which these children can socialize, and there will be many, many other venues that can be found to meet other kids and socialize.
On the other hand, I expect that being strip-searched probably messes up social and other skills. While this is an unusual case, for far too many kids, being the recipient of bullying also messes up their social skills.
From TFA: "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
And the assertions of the adults involved that they're not pedophiles and child molesters should not be misread to infer that they aren't, only that they were never caught.
Before you condemn the living shit out of the school district, try to remember that they have an affirmative responsibility to prevent students from harming themselves while in school.
Sorry, you're 100% full of shit. They failed in their responsibility to protect the children in their care, in case you didn't RTFA one of them got strip searched, for christ's sake.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday March 24 2009, @05:37PM (#27320625)
Fucking forced logins..... here's the whole article:
March 24, 2009 Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy By ADAM LIPTAK
SAFFORD, Ariz. - Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on - black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt - the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.
In Ms. Redding's case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, "It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights."
"More than that," Judge Wardlaw added, "it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity."
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
The Supreme Court's last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion - as opposed to systematic drug testing programs - was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student's purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding's case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was "carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal."
The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.
Sitting in her aunt's house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. "There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types," she said. "I was in between nerdy and preppy."
One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. "She started acting weird and wearing black," Ms. Redding said. "She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy."
When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court p
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
and
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
and
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
1.There is nothing reasonable or doubtful that thinking that two advils would do serious harm, or even minor harm to a 13 year old girl. 2. There is also nothing reasonable about strip searching a 13 year old girl who was minding her own business 3. There is nothing reasonable about strip searching a girl even if she did have a prescription for Ibuprofen
What is happening is that special interest groups are normalizing this aggressive and authoritarian policy and practice towards children (and adults as well, but that's another topic). They are continuing to normalize and escalate these nasty and unwarranted attitudes and behaviours.
Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I would say it's only fair for schools to be allowed to strip search students if parents are allowed to skin teachers/administrators with rusty vegetable peelers.
Anything less is cause for revolution.
Actually, come to think of it, isn't this exactly what that part of your constitution about carrying guns is for?
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
Lots of people are assholes. Many sex offenders are assholes. Being an asshole should not be sufficient to cause us to throw away our principles to crucify them. In this case, by all means, charge them with any applicable crimes. However, I, and many others, object to sex offender registries because they make it difficult or impossible for individuals to successfully re-enter society, by barring individuals from living in many areas, and for effectively punishing them beyond the time they serve in prison. So no, sex offender registries should not exist, and nobody should be put on them.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had found out that some school official strip searched my kid, regardless of age or sex; the officials involved would never have made it to trial.
For those that didn't RTFA:
After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
School is supposed to be a place where kids are safe. When the solution is worse then the crime you have a system out of control.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
No they shouldn't. Barred from working with children? Probably. But that's about the extent of it.
This incident shows incredibly poor judgment, and suggests that the morons involved got way too caught up in their "no drugs in school" policy, but it does not, in any way, indicate a likelihood of the perpetrators seeking to abuse children for sexual pleasure.
Cavalierly throwing people on the registry is how we got to where we are now, where peeing in the bushes gets you marked with the scarlet letter for life, and Georgia's even started throwing non-offenders on the list [ajc.com].
The registry is questionable enough in the first place; treating it lightly like this just makes it worse.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad that the Ninth Circuit had the insight to say that this was wrong, I only hope that the Supreme Court is picking this up so that they can more firmly put this in the "Not Allowed" category. Schools need to understand that these are not their children and that for anything more intrusive than a locker search the parents should be involved.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it would be reasonable to argue a 4th ammendment violiation in this case.
It's not just an illegal search, it's a goddamned felony. If these assholes go free while someone like Charlie Lynch goes to jail, then the law in the USA is a complete joke.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
If so, they should get a fucking warrant.
There is absolutely *NO* excuse for school officials sexually abusing a 13-year-old.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that is true as far as the legal system is concerned, but i would bet that to the school administrators, they were at the very least reminded of the previous incident. Humans connect things and their intentions probably came from a desire to prevent another overdose.
Thankfully, school administrators are still subject to "the legal system." As for their purported desire to prevent anything, the ends still don't justify the means.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
The accusation was that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen, which is not OTC medication.
But I agree that the police should have been involved for any form of invasive search. There also shouldn't have been a zero-tolerance policy to begin with, as the enforcement of these often removes the gray area of judgment of when to enforce a policy and moves the gray area into how to enforce the policy, often erring on the side of draconian.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just so you know...
Prescription strength ibuprofen is 800mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
As opposed to OTC ibuprofen which is 200mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
i.e., if you have 4 advil, you have the equivalent of one prescription strength ibuprofen.
---
In ANY case, school administrators should not (and probably DO not) have the legal authority be able to strip search a minor.
That's a police matter. And even then, I think the parents should be present.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
She did not have any drugs in her posession. All the school officials had as reason was the accusation of another girl who had been caught and was trying to shift blame.
But their attitude was clearly "guilty until proven innocent":
Parent
YAN... Oh, never mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights.
I don't disagree with that. But all this focus on legalities (I'm tempted to go into my usual "slashdotters think too highly of their own legal expertise" rant) kind of misses the most important point: these school administrators humiliated a 13-year-old, all in the name of verifying that she wasn't "smuggling" some pills that aren't even for a drug of abuse! Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I grew up with Migraines. Pre- the wonderful better drugs we have now I needed to take massive amounts of Ibuprofen to keep them in check and hell-yeah I had it with me at all times including at school. "Prescription Strength" means 800mg = 4 over the counter pills = 1/2 what I needed to bring down a bad migraine.
Their mention of the "not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction" what.. she's a girl so we can strip search her? She's 13 so we can strip search her? She might, heaven-forbid, have *Advil* so we can strip search her?!?
Let them burn.
Parent
Re:Been following this for awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
"role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds"
I love how America has so many laws and yet regardless of how many patriotic movies it creates it still believes the constitution has limited application.
Parent
Re:Zero! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the "zero tolerance" mentality.
Exactly. "Zero tolerance" is newspeak for "zero common sense." Anyone who isn't capable of applying their own judgement instead of blindly following a rule in a situation like this is far too stupid to have anything to teach a child.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Zero! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the areas where "zero tolerance" has been applied - they are the areas most likely to have people unable to competently apply judgment. Removal of the grey areas assures that the same decision will be made every time for a given set of circumstances - essentially "dumbing down" the rules for those in authority.
Have we really fallen so far as to believe that we should follow leaders that need the rules "dumbed down"?
Parent
Jesus H. Christ's squeezable bacon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a teenager having a fucking ibuprofen such a monstrous and immediate security threat that we need to strip search her? Or was somebody just a little too eager to strip search a 13 year old? Hmm?
I wonder if the court would have upheld the 13-year old's right to strenously kick school officials in the balls for forcibly removing her clothing?
It seems to me that, since she *wasn't* found to be in possession of any drugs at all, she's in a good position to make somebody's life really, really uncomfortable for a while.
Re:Jesus H. Christ's squeezable bacon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Jesus H. Christ's squeezable bacon! (Score:5, Insightful)
nor will it defend against high velocity lead
Now, now. No need to threaten violence. Just post wanted-ish posters with "Pedophile?" in the caption around their neighborhood... every time they move. Eventually they'll off themselves.
Parent
And people wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rules for the sake of rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget, it wasn't just that it was prescription strength OTC medication (she could have taken a handful of "regular" pills for the same effect)
The entire thing was based on the accusations of another student. No one actually saw her with any pills of any kind. A strip search for what amounts to over the counter medication based on the accusations of another student.
If a student had accused the vice principal of the same thing, would they be expected to submit to a strip search?
Zero tolerance policies are the same as "I just don't want to make hard decisions" so instead you make f'ing stupid ones.
The Plan: Get Kids Used to it in school... (Score:5, Interesting)
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
sexual assault (Score:5, Insightful)
A "strip-search" performed by anyone other than a police officer acting with probable cause is a sexual assault.
People, including teens and children, have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary against such an attack, and should be trained to do so.
After some pervert principal gets his testicles crushed and his eyes gouged by a student he's trying to attack, perhaps we might see an end to this bullshit.
Not excessive? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what could excessively intrusive have been in this case? Surgically cutting her open and checking all internal organs?
wow, that's pretty fucked up (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe our legislators who are always so worried about sexual exploitation of children as an excuse to censor the internet and everything else, might want to look into whether prohibiting the government from forcibly stripping children naked shouldn't be a higher priority.
Which part of the Constiturion applies to children (Score:5, Interesting)
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
I suggest you check out this http://is.gd/oMQM [is.gd] and this http://is.gd/lQwS [is.gd]
Incorrect: "I was spanked as a kid and I turned OK."
Correct: "I was spanked as a kid and I grew up to believe that spanking is OK."
Re:Which part of the Constiturion applies to child (Score:5, Interesting)
Strip searching is completely different from, say, sending a child to bed without dinner.
The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. Would not at all be interested in helping "open source software." Haven't you seen 12 year olds act like two year olds? And 22 year olds act like 12 year olds? If they don't get their way, they whine and cry and throw tantrums because they expect to get their way, because that's how it's happened all their life.
The world doesn't work that way. It is not incorrect to say I was spanked as a kid and I turned out [sic] OK. On the other hand, many people seem to think that if children's desires were just gratified more as a child, they wouldn't be so problematic. We are having more and more kids have everything the want, and it's been that way increasingly for a while now. Seen any improvements in "bad things" such as greed, poverty, violence, sexual assault, etc.?
I would venture to guess that school officials such as these two female ones that strip-searched a 13 year old girl based on an accusation from a kid (who, by the way, when faced with real consequences of his actions, thought he would just get out of it by lying - something some kids are spanked for and learn is not good. Hm...) are not accustomed to not getting what they want, and likely would have gotten quite mad if the girl had refused to do what they told her to. Authority "complexes" don't come from not having every desire fulfilled as a child. "Spoiled brats" are usually quite bossy and get quite angry when they don't get their way. Seems like that behavior continues into adulthood.
Curbing that behavior in a child is pretty important. It has nothing to do with dignity, it has to do with wanting the child to behave well and not simply float around, expecting (WRONGLY) everything to be his for the ordering. That is letting the child grow up in a lie. Very respectful of his dignity, I'm sure.
Parent
In light of her age and sex? (Score:5, Insightful)
This just goes to show (Score:5, Insightful)
that "Zero Tolerance" policies are absurd. There is a reason why we have judge and juries. Laws do not apply evenly. Regardless of the policy, any reasonable person would see how stupid it was to trust another student's accusations and then harass a student with a good record over one pill of OTC pain relief.
Just say no to zero tolerance.
Father should be facing charges (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was the girls father I would now be facing my own charges of assault and battery for beating the shit out of the school assistance principle and the two staffers who strip searched my daughter for suspicion of having a fucking aspirin.
Found this nugget (Score:5, Interesting)
While I also think it is irrelevant, that just sounds really bad coming from a school official. You stay class Safford, AZ school district.
Re:Found this nugget (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the same logic the people conducting the strip search of a 13 year old student could very possibly be sex offenders then. Sure, they might not have a criminal record and aren't on the sex offenders register, but that just means they haven't been caught.
Parent
Supreme court will agree with the State, I bet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone want to place bets the supreme court will agree with the state, and restrict a students rights?
After reading Morse v. Frederick, only John Paul Stevens understood the right for first amendment rights to protest illegal behavior. (aka Vietnam and medical marijuana as examples)
Chief Justice Roberts went along the normal "war against drugs" lie, that they had to punish the student to "SEND A MESSAGE"...
Justice Clarence Thomas viewed schools have no free speech and "Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."
It's crazy. I think I understand the issue better than then most of the Supreme Court, the most educated, the best of the best? They agreed to strip a fundamental right away for a war on drugs, and to make a teachers job easier. To allow a child to be randomly strip searched without proper cause? To prevent protests in a non-disrupting behavior off school grounds? wow.. just wow...
Why am I always disagreeing with them on most issues. I talk to co-workers, family and friends, and we seem to be in the same beliefs and values. Yet, I read the Supreme Courts views and I disagree, most of the time. I very rarely agree with the court. Few times have I cheered decisions about cases. Take Lawrence v. Texas which effectively legalized being gay. And of course, Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas dissented. My favorite comment roughly (I cant find it) from Texas "We dont discriminate against Gays just Gay Sex", and a justice asked "What is the difference?"
I'll end this lengthy topic that means much to me with a Scala qoute.
"Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best ... But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else." --Scalia.
Guilty until proven innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant. "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
I would never want anyone from a school with this attitude to be involved in the education of my children.
Re:Think of the naked 13 year old (Score:5, Funny)
Nice try, FBI. I'm not falling for that one again.
Parent
Re:Tip of the ice berg. (Score:5, Insightful)
Home schooling fucks up your social skills. We need good public schools.
No. Socializing children fucks up their social skills. Have you ever been a child before? You should remember what it was like. Children are not good at teaching each other morals or good social skills. What they do learn from each other is Human Nature, which isn't a very good thing to learn if you are being taught by human children. Go to a football game in England to see what socialization does.
Parent
Re:Tip of the ice berg. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Tip of the ice berg. (Score:5, Insightful)
As the parent of 3 homeschooled children, I can tell you that such a generic statement is complete rubbish.
Yes, if the kids a locked away and never socialize, they probably won't have good social skills.
That situation does not represent the experience of many homeschooled kids. In any area where there are significant groups of homeschooled children, there will be organizations through which these children can socialize, and there will be many, many other venues that can be found to meet other kids and socialize.
On the other hand, I expect that being strip-searched probably messes up social and other skills. While this is an unusual case, for far too many kids, being the recipient of bullying also messes up their social skills.
Parent
Re:Tip of the ice berg. (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA: "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
And the assertions of the adults involved that they're not pedophiles and child molesters should not be misread to infer that they aren't, only that they were never caught.
Sheesh.
Parent
Re:Don't be too hard on the school .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you condemn the living shit out of the school district, try to remember that they have an affirmative responsibility to prevent students from harming themselves while in school.
Sorry, you're 100% full of shit. They failed in their responsibility to protect the children in their care, in case you didn't RTFA one of them got strip searched, for christ's sake.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt the US Tsarkon Rep (Score:5, Informative)
Fucking forced logins..... here's the whole article:
March 24, 2009
Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By ADAM LIPTAK
SAFFORD, Ariz. - Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on - black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt - the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.
In Ms. Redding's case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, "It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights."
"More than that," Judge Wardlaw added, "it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity."
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
The Supreme Court's last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion - as opposed to systematic drug testing programs - was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student's purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding's case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was "carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal."
The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.
Sitting in her aunt's house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. "There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types," she said. "I was in between nerdy and preppy."
One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. "She started acting weird and wearing black," Ms. Redding said. "She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy."
When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court p
Parent
Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt the US Tsarkon Rep (Score:5, Interesting)
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
and
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
and
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
1.There is nothing reasonable or doubtful that thinking that two advils would do serious harm, or even minor harm to a 13 year old girl.
2. There is also nothing reasonable about strip searching a 13 year old girl who was minding her own business
3. There is nothing reasonable about strip searching a girl even if she did have a prescription for Ibuprofen
What is happening is that special interest groups are normalizing this aggressive and authoritarian policy and practice towards children (and adults as well, but that's another topic). They are continuing to normalize and escalate these nasty and unwarranted attitudes and behaviours.
Parent