Strip Searching Midschoolers?

[catknit 144]

And this is when someone points out it's already posted, right?

Maybe there isn't much of a debate around here on strip searching 13 year olds...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether a public school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old student by conducting a strip search of her for ibuprofen.

The school argued in its appeal that the Constitution allowed a strip search of a student suspected of having prescription-strength ibuprofen in violation of its policy that prohibited medications on campus without permission.

School officials in Safford, Arizona, ordered the search in 2003 of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade. Following an assistant principal's orders, a school nurse had Redding remove her clothes, including her bra, and shake her underwear to see if she was hiding ibuprofen, a common painkiller.

School officials did not find ibuprofen, which is found in over-the-counter medications like Advil and Motrin. Higher doses require a prescription.

The strip search had been prompted by an unverified tip from another girl who had Redding's school planner and some ibuprofen pills. She claimed Redding had given her the pills.

Redding denied it and an initial search of her backpack and pockets did not turn up any ibuprofen. The assistant principal then ordered the strip search to be done in front of the nurse and his administrative assistant, both women.

Redding said she was embarrassed, scared and about to cry. She said she felt humiliated and violated by the strip search.

A federal appeals court ruled the school and school officials violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment right that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It said alleged ibuprofen possession was "an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one." Instead of forcing Redding to disrobe, school officials could have kept her in the principal's office until a parent arrived or could have sent her home.

The appeals court also ruled the assistant principal may be held liable for damages for the search.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school argued that the ruling has alarmed administrators and teachers around the country.

The decision "places student safety and school order at risk by impairing the ability of school officials to effectively carry out their custodial responsibility," it said.

Redding's lawyers opposed the appeal.

"A school official simply cannot order a strip search any time a frightened student points an accusatory finger at another student," they said.

If the school wins, strip searches could become as prevalent as "the common practice of students tattling on each other," her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union said. Continued...

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNew...E50F6JA20090116

[mawilson 2,133]

Sounds good. Any job vacancies?

[Nagishkaw 510]

That's what I was thinking.

[john & jean 37]

not near the outcry one would hear if they stripsearch the teachers......

[Nagishkaw 510]

[catknit 144]

I still can't imagine the school thought this was ok?

[Nagishkaw 510]

What will be next? Cavity searches?

[Niels Bohr 72]

Power hungry brain

[catknit 144]

One of the better opinion pieces I found on this whole mess:

By Sara Libby Sara Libby – Tue Apr 21, 5:00 am ET

Los Angeles – For many 13-year-old girls, being featured – even fleetingly – on a national news program might be exciting. Not for me. My image flickered across the screen only briefly on "Dateline NBC" – it was during one of my basketball games, and it showed all of my awkward teenage glory.

The context, however, made the whole thing more embarrassing than exhilarating: The program was all about how a group of my female classmates had been strip-searched after a gym class when several students reported some makeup, cash, and CDs missing. "Dateline" producers had filmed several of our team's games to use as B-roll while the anchor discussed the case.

Though I wasn't one of the girls in the class forced to remove their clothing to prove they weren't hiding the stolen items, I still look back at the episode – which for a time nearly ripped our community apart – with anger and a sense of betrayal.

Soon after the ordeal took place, I overheard my parents and grandparents discussing it, saying they didn't think the administrators and police officers who orchestrated the search were wrong. I fled the house in tears, aghast that my own family thought it would have been OK for me to have been made to undergo a humiliating act in front of a group of strange adults.

The incident at my school was not the first, nor the last in which young kids were made to strip as a result of school administrators bent on proving their "zero tolerance" for crime. The Supreme Court heard arguments in another such case tuesday – this one involving an 13-year-old Arizona honors student who was strip-searched in 2003 when school officials suspected she possessed ibuprofen. The search turned up nothing.

Defenders of such tactics insist that limiting schools' ability to carry out searches will invite more drugs and danger into classrooms. Certainly, the sentiment of protecting young people within school walls is right, but the method of protection must match that sentiment.

If students are going to be subjected to increasingly restrictive policies – no cellphones, iPods, painkillers, etc. – certainly administrators should have to operate under some limitations as well. And having rules in place to prevent kids from being forced to expose their bodies (something they'd be punished for if done by their own volition) might be a good place to start – particularly if all that's at stake is little more than some 99-cent bottles of Wet 'n' Wild nail polish and a copy of the "Grease" soundtrack.

In weighing potential threats, schools should take several factors into account: Does the suspected student pose an imminent threat? More important: Is the search itself reasonable? While that's open to interpretation, a good rule of thumb might be to get parental permission for anything other than simple tactics like making a student empty his or her pockets.

Savana Redding, the Arizona student whom the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with before the case landed before the high court, still recounts the incident as "the most humiliating experience" of her life. My closest friend shares that pain. Eleven years later, she says that being searched so intrusively left her with a deep emotional scar.

"In all the meetings and interviews afterward, the police and vice principal made it sound like they were just doing it to protect us," she recalls. "But they didn't care about protecting us in that locker room, when girls were crying and begging to call their parents."

A 2005 survey by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation revealed that high school students know shockingly little about some of their most basic constitutional rights – and it's no wonder when schools are trampling on them so blatantly.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, a 1969 case involving students who wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court famously noted that students do not "shed their constitutional rights ... at the schoolhouse gate." At the very least, that should include not having to shed their clothes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090421/cm_cs...v3G_hYH.I39wxIF

[sara..... 371]

im sorry but thats just wrong wrong wrong wrong!!!!!!!!

sara

[Peikko 1,575]

The story was posted already

[sj5 4]

It's wrong!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Sounds good. Any job vacancies?