And as such, will probably not understand the legal intricacies of this case that was debated in the Supreme Court yesterday. However, I can state that as someone with an IQ over room temperature, the fact that we are debating whether it is appropriate for school authorities to strip search kids is a sure sign that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with this country and our sense of perspective, and I blame the war on drugs.
*** Update ***
Government by old men afraid of advil is disgusting:
On the courthouse steps after argument today, Redding is asked what she’d have wanted the school to do differently. “Call my mom first,” she says. You see, we now have school districts all around the country finding naked photos of teens and immediately calling in the police for possession of kiddie porn. Yet schools see nothing wrong with stripping these same kids naked to search for drugs. Evidently teenage nakedness is only a problem when the children choose to be naked. And the parents? They are always the last to know.
Where is the outrage? Oh, yeah. They are too busy protesting the fact that Bill Gate’s taxes are going to go up 3%! Tyranny!
cleek
the war on drugs has hurt America far more than any terrorist group ever has.
4tehlulz
The War on Drugs, MADD, and John Walsh all contributed by making us all completely paranoid.
joe from Lowell
Stripped search, over ibuprofin.
itsbenj
I agree whole-heartedly. This IS one of the very negative outgrowths of the bad policies that the American public have simply internalized and accepted, Stockholm-syndrome-like, of the Drug War. Things like this and the fact that applying for jobs now involves urinating into cups while an attendant waits nearby. It is insanity — yet everyone just accepts it pretty much without complaint because, well, Americans really aren’t that into personal freedom when it comes right down to it.
But at the same time, I see a larger counter-argument. And that has more to do with the recent ‘sexting’ cases where kids send each other lurid pics of themselves, and then ‘panty-sniffing perverts’ (as Atrios says) step in and try to prosecute them. In these cases, as well as the strip search case, really what you have are simply messed up adults who want to see little kids naked. So I say its a combination of the population being willing to accept massive invasion of personal privacy in exchange for, well, nothing, and the repressed, puritanical nature of our culture which inevitably breeds perverts who invent entire legal rationales for being able to check out nude pics of little kids.
Dennis-SGMM
It’s a War on Drugs, man, so we gotta’ do whatever it takes to win. That young lady should have been waterboarded until she confessed. Ibuprofin is a known gateway drug and the sooner we uncover the network that’s supplying it to our children the better off we’ll all be.
/Every administration since Nixon
thomas
prohibition didn’t work 80 years ago why do they think it will work now? Legalize and tax and control disribution. Think what the revenue stream reversal will be when we can shut down more than 50% of our prison beds and a fair amount of our policing requirements, while at the same time creating new $$.
I listened to that report on NPR yesterday evening and the first thing that came to my mind was – what kind of idiots do we have running our educational system?
Dungheap
There’s no question which way Strip Search Sammy will come out on this one.
Xanthippas
I’m also thinking that old people who haven’t been in grade school in a long time, are not the people we want deciding this case:
Zifnab
You and Justice Thomas.
That whole 4th Amendment thing not applying to children in a school setting? I’m really just waiting for what eventually triggers the push back. At a certain point, I imagine a kid is going to actually have to get raped in the principal’s office and have it deemed perfectly legal by a high court before we see any move back towards civil rights.
This is horrendous, but it’s clearly not horrendous enough to get any traction from the public.
evie
And by all accounts, SCOTUS is going to uphold the school’s right to, effectively, sexually violate minors. I’m stunned and horrified.
Kryptik
Oh sweet Jesus…
Souter and Breyer, two of the more ‘liberal’ justices on the bench, basically just demonstrated which side they’re gonna rule on.
They’re gonna overturn the lower courts on this. I’m….god, I’m sick now. Of all things, they’re really okaying this….
John Cole
@Kryptik: Liberals have as bad a record with the war on drugs as conservatives, and it wasn’t just a bunch of conservatives pushing zero tolerance in schools.
This mindset is rampant.
Dennis-SGMM
Children as chattels with no rights: the wingnuts will approve of this bold step backwards.
Michael
I’ve let my middle and high school daughters know that they’re free to beat the living shit out of any school official who approaches them with a request for a strip search, and I’ll not only back them up 100%, but will be administering some beatings of my own.
anonevent
The problem you’re having, John, is that sense of perspective is not measured on an IQ test, and it’s neither taught in school nor generally taught by parents to their kids. The only thing this case will do is tell schools to make sure they get two reports before they do a strip search, not one, assuming that the ruling goes in the girl’s favor. We live in a world where *ADD groups chase everyone that touches alcohol or serves it, and people who think it’s their god given right to drive after drinking. Perspective is not an American quality. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the tea parties.
Kryptik
@John Cole:
I was hoping (futilely, apparently) that respect for the privacy and dignity of a child (as well as the common sense of the ridiculousness of strip searching a child for as little as Advil might have won over on that part.
God, I hate Zero Tolerance mindsets….especially when it seems to be the majority mindset of those in charge.
Egypt Steve
Why in fuck are we even debating whether this was a reasonable search? In my book, the people who did it are pedophiles, plain and simple. If we are prosecuting teenagers as child pornographers for sending naked pictures of themselves to their friends, then the perverts who forced that girl to disrobe need to be prosecuted for sexual assault and be branded as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
superking
They were apparently looking for one prescription strength ibuprofen pill. One prescription strength ibuprofen is as strong as two regular ibuprofen.
If you’ve ever injured, say, a knee, and gone to the doctor about it, they will likely tell you to take 4 advil for the pain. If you read the label, however, it’ll say don’t take more than 6 in 24 hours. As I understand it, the label says that in order to keep people from hiding chronic injuries. Ibuprofen isn’t habit forming, and as anyone who has ever had a headache knows, you certainly don’t get high from it.
This search was completely ridiculous. What bothers me the most is that we are squeezing our kids in this way in order to “protect” them, but really we are just acclimating them to a world where they have no privacy, no rights, and constant surveillance is acceptable. If we want people who are interested in their rights in the future, we have to show them those rights are important.
I don’t expect much, though, since the SCT fucks up everything they do.
Steve V
I believe Rehnquist et al. are more directly responsible for the state of our 4th amendment jurisprudence.
jrg
I remember a few years ago, some nearby high-school senior was caught with a cigar in her car. The cops had used a dog to search every car on the premises. The dog went nuts, so the cops assumed there was grass in the cigar.
It took months for high-school senior to get the case through court, in order to prove that it was a cigar, not a blunt (She was 18, and it was not even her cigar). She eventually cleared her name, but only after the mix-up prevented her from getting into college.
Her judge, jury, and executioner was a f*cking dog. We live in a sick, sick world.
Punchy
I read a few days back that a 16 year old girl was EXPELLLED from school from taking……..birth control.
Yup. Practicing safe-sex methods gets you tossed from high school. The principal pretty much said that it’s all about a complete zero tolerance for any meds, whatsoever, period. Shit, I’da been screwed in HS without the ability to drop some Advil or No-Doz on occasion.
That certainly is the War on Drugs mentality.
Dennis-SGMM
If they called it the War on Common Sense then no one would want to play now would they?
Robert Johnston
You’re more of a lawyer and constitutional scholar than any “Justice” who votes to allow this search. The legal ability and scholarliness of the Supreme Court Justices are vastly overrated. This is a case that would never have been granted oral arguments or even the oportunity for submission of briefs by any Justice guilty of legal acumen; the only legally appropriate way to handle this case was to grand cert and summarily uphold the lower court at the same time. Anything more than sheer contempt for the school’s argument is legally unjustifiable.
Face
I cant wait to see where the SC draws the line. Can a principal actually stick fingers in….”there”….under the guise of looking for pills? Can he actually touch breasts “searching” for drugs?
Seriously, this sounds hyperbolic, but how far crazy is it really if the SC ends up green-lighting strip-searches of 13 year olds? If this happens ANYWHERE but a school, that principal is in jail for decades and a labeled sex offender.
Sick shit.
The Grand Panjandrum
I can’t write anything rational about this episode. I have two daughters in first grade. I would probably be in prison if it had been my daughter.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
I blame Ayn Rand. After all, if the school ubermensch wants to strip search kids, Objectivism would find nothing wrong that: never get in the way of the ubermensch.
Authoritarians take all sorts of evil and insane liberties when they think they are in charge and above the law. The school authorities in this instance are just following the example set by Bush & Cheney at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. The drug war is only an excuse to legitimize the strip searches.
.
Sarcastro
“You’ve searched everywhere else,” Justice Scalia said. “By God, the drugs must be in her underpants.”
By God… they weren’t.
And anyways, “By God”? If God put the ibuprofen in her panties then who the hell is Scalia to punish her for it?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I can see a couple principals getting beaten up or gunned down over something like this.
Breyer’s always been a 4th Amendment Fascist, though. No surprises there.
Svensker
Why don’t they waterboard somebody in this case — either the girl or the guy who strip-searched her — and that way everything would be legal! And fabulous! USA USA.
Zifnab
@The Grand Panjandrum: Only after the cops turned up all the Advil in your
drug denmedicine cabinet. I’m pretty sure you can get out on probation for assault and battery if its a first offense.@Face: See, that’s what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for a principal or teacher to get busted for repeated sexual assaults on a long list of kids. And I’m waiting for some court to cut the administrator loose on the grounds that he/she was “just looking for drugs”.
Then it’ll be the anti-drug gang against the save-the-children gang, and – god willing – Nancy Grace’s head will just explode on the spot.
They keep rolling back civil rights like this and the abuses are just going to keep getting worse and worse. Because, why not?
Persia
@Face:
I do not understand how the people in the school district can stand behind this behavior and look at themselves in the mirror. I really cannot. I mean, clearly there’s some sickness going on in the school administration, but the layers of people who decided this behavior was not only okay, but worth going to the Supreme Court over makes me ill.
NutellaonToast
i think that someone should make an anonymous tip to the DC police that the judges in favor of strip searches are all known to conceal drugs in their robes while presiding over the court. I’d love to see how fast they were stripped searched based on that information.
greynoldsct00
Yeah, like all school “authorities” are respectable people – not that this would be acceptable even if they were, it’s still epically wrong – you can’t give that kind of power to them.
This is hideous and makes a case for home schooling if we go down this path.
blahblahblah
And the attorney for the school system in question, along with Scalia, could see nothing wrong with potentially even body cavity searches. You mean sticking your finger up a child’s ass? And yet we’re registering pre-teens as sex offenders for snapping cell-phone shots of their privates to send to friends. But if the school system claims to *believe* drugs may be present on a child’s body, perhaps it’s OK to strip him or her naked and conduct an invasive body cavity search.
What the fuck went wrong with this country?
JGabriel
Jesus H. Fucking Chist On A Fucking Pogo Stick!
My thought process is: if the situation warrants a strip search, then the school authorities should call the police, present them with the evidence to justify a warrant, and let them take it from there.
If there’s no law being broken, or it’s not important enough to call the cops, then it’s not important enough to justify a strip search.
Clearly, the suspicion of hidden ibuprofen does not rise to that level. Fucking assholes.
.
geg6
@itsbenj:
This.
mms
When my now 31-year old daughter was in middle school, one of her fellow students had sold No-Doze as ‘speed’ for $1 a tab on school property. The principal called in a bunch of kids and checked out the story as well as he could, and then called the police (school resource officer) to handle it. I don’t know what happened to the girl in terms of charges, but I do know that she wasn’t strip searched! And that was a far more serious situation than this case. You don’t ever violate a child’s bodily privacy. Ever.
As a teacher, I cannot imagine ANY scenario where a student would be strip-searched. ANY. Period. If the Supremes determine that body searches are OK, just wait until the parents learn this would be legal. Student records and files (which are inviolate) would be accorded more legal rights than a child’s body! Unbelievable.
Brachiator
Actually, there are still people who believe that children have no rights that need to be respected, and certainly no constitutional rights (although the age at which children become magically rights-endowed is fuzzy in most people’s minds).
This issue should never have risen to the level of a legal case. That there are local school boards, and state school systems that believe that strait-jacketed “zero tolerance” policies for drugs and weapons is ridiculous. Equally blameworthy are state legislatures that are so gutless as to permit this nonsense.
Think about this for half a second. A strip search over prescription Ibuprofen? Are you fucking kidding me?
However, I think, no I fear, that the Supreme Court will uphold the authority of the school to do ridiculous shit simply because it probably is legal. But as they say, sometimes the law is an ass.
Ironically enough, in some jurisdictions, a teacher suspected of having hard drugs would be protected against an ilegal search, and would have his or her union running to provide protective cover even if the teacher had a criminal record.
However, if the legal right to a strip search is upheld, I DO like the idea of a parent having a teacher or principal who performs the search arrested for sexual assault. This is a game of legal chicken that I’d love to see go through the courts.
NonyNony
@NutellaonToast:
They wouldn’t. Because the justices on the SC all make too much money and have too much political power to be harassed by the cops over an anonymous tip. If Clarence Thomas still drives himself to work (doubtful) you might get more of a scene if you drop a tip that you saw a “black guy driving a nice car” selling drugs to kids on a school along his route between work and home, but even then I’d bet the cops would figure out who he was pretty quickly and let him go. That’s the nice thing about being an elite – you’re excused from even the minimal day-to-day harassment the rest of us innocent folks have to occasionally worry about.
@Zifnab:
Not gonna happen. The schools know where the lines can be drawn for sexual assault charges and are very careful to make sure that those rules are followed to the T. Note that in this case there were two women in the room with the girl – the school nurse and a secretary – and they performed the search. Same gender, and two of them so that there could be two-against-one testimony.
What it’s going to take to stop this crap are the people who own the school district (i.e. the voters) putting an end to it by voting in a school board that cares about the kids. Unfortunately, what I see in school board elections is that the people who tend to make up the majority of the school boards in suburban/rural areas here in Ohio don’t tend to give a rat’s ass about the kids and are only on the school board because they’re scared to death that their tax dollars are getting spent to fund something they don’t like. Most suburban school boards tend to be chock full of assholes – because most voters who don’t have kids want their schools run as cheaply as possible. You get a few good people, but they get drowned out by the majority who get voted in by old people who don’t want to see their property taxes “wasted” on kids. (Old people, I might add, who seem to have moved to the suburbs in the 1960s to get “better schools” for their kids. “Better schools” being a code word that I’m ashamed to admit took me a helluva long time to figure out was actually a code word.)
(And don’t get me started on urban school boards, which seem mostly to be stocked with assholes who see it as an opportunity to make enough of a name for themselves to move up to City Council or County Commissioner or State House Rep or something and care about the kids only so far as they worry about getting elected to their next rung on the ladder. I hate school boards – “local control” is such a joke.)
Persia
@JGabriel: I would love to see the statistics on the many children dead in this country due to contraband ibuprofen.
I hate all these guys. Except Ginsberg. She can stay.
Comrade Dread
The whole thing disgusts me to no end, but I think this little gem is what is going to get me to home school the kids:
So our valiant school drug warriors would be perfectly fine with shoving their hands up a kid’s bum or snatch if they were properly trained in the use of rubber gloves.
Our kids are chattel to these bastards.
Zandar
It’s less the war on drugs as it is the fault of the zero-tolerance, all students are considered suspects because they just haven’t been caught yet attitude of the schools.
rreay
@JGabriel:
100% agree.
School administrators can call the cops for an invasive search, with a warrant if necessary or they can forget about it. No middle ground.
BlizzardOfOz
“No legal obstacle to such a search.”
Individual liberty indeed… that’s the “conservative” value, right? My brain hurts. I would just second the notion that these people are begging for some beat up and/or shot school officials.
Cat Lady
Cavity searches allowed in schools, and school systems cutting back on administrative personnel who do things like standard background searches. What could possibly go wrong?
Zifnab
@NonyNony:
No more of a joke than municipal or state or federal control. At least, when enough people get pissed off, the PTA can march down to the house of the Superindendent or whomever, pound on the porch, and shout “WTF?!” Better than making them drive all the way up to Austin or D.C.
I mean, I know what you’re saying about school boards being run by assholes. But they’re locally accountable assholes. Try getting your state or federal Congressman to give a fuck.
And I see what you’re saying. This probably wouldn’t have happened in a town willing to go all Jena Six on the district. If the administrators fear the parents, they’re kept in line to a better degree. But that’s just from a local standpoint. From a federal legal standpoint, you still need some sort of overhead ruling. It offers locals a lot more leverage when they can hold up a SCOTUS case and say, “This is categorically not legal” than to simply point out the obvious of it being immoral and sick.
Comrade Darkness
Really not trolling, but I have to point out that people homeschool for a LOT of reasons. Avoiding dinosaurs in textbooks is only minority reason.
rreay
@superking:
[I’ve had my outrage, time to go offtopic for a sec]
While I don’t know about Ibuprofen I do know the warning is on Acetaminophen is there for a damn good reason. An overdose will kill you and the dosage level that is an OD is alot smaller than you might think.
Punchy
I can already write the advertisement:
“Are you an uncontrollable pedophile? Unable to resist the urges to touch the youngsters, but afraid of One Time busting your ass?
BECOME A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL!! ALL THE TOUCHING, NONE OF THE QUESTIONS!”
/vomits
geg6
@Comrade Darkness:
You may be right when looking at national statistics. However, where I live people who do it for any other reason other than avoiding dinosaurs would be the extremely teeny tiny minority of home schoolers.
Just sayin’.
JK
Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
Henry the Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2
Mr. Stuck
@Dennis-SGMM:
That war has already been fought. It was called the Bush Administration. A lot of fallen brain cells. RIP
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
The War on Drugs will hopefully go down in history as a collossally dumb thing in the same way that Prohibition did … and for many of the same reasons.
But it’s useful to keep in mind that it didn’t land on the planet like an asteroid. It was chosen, methodically and deliberately, by the people, who voted for it via their representatives and their elected officials.
The people created the War Machine that is now going on the talk shows stating that torture has kept America safe. The people created the War on Drugs.
The good news is, the people still run the country, and just as they have turned away from the Cheney view of the War on Terror, they can turn away from the boneheaded War on Drugs, and get rid of it.
As soon as the people tire of nonsense like this strip search, they can get to work replacing the people who have made an industry out of a misguided war on our own citizens.
Persia
Re the update: I’ve learned that the school will not call you as a parent for fucking anything if they can avoid it, even if your kid’s hearing aid battery’s dead, you have plenty of replacements, and you and your designated backup guardian live within walking distance.
Comrade Darkness
@rreay: Ibuprofen does not have the same liver toxicity problem that tylenol does. Excessive use is problematic because it will destroy the lining of your stomach and can cause uncontrolled bleeding if you injure yourself.
Minor overdosing is hard, because your stomach will ache and inform you that taking more is a really bad idea.
Brien Jackson
The crux of the case, ultimately, is that there was simply no probable cause for searching Redding whatsoever. It was another girl who was caught with the ibuprofen, and only accused Redding of giving it to her after school officials promised her a reduced punishment if she told them who gave it to her. That’s self-interest. Between self-interest and the fact that the claim was uncorroborated, the “evidence” wasn’t strong enough to reach the level of probable cause, which is to say that if it had been the police and they had gone to a judge for a search warrant, the request would have been denied.
That the Supreme Court is probably going to decide for the school is an absolute joke, and David Souter in particular really looks like a giant fucking moron. Alito and Roberts are just statist fucks, Thomas thinks you become chattel one you enter a school, Breyer has no respect for civil liberties, and Kennedy is a squishy wind blower. Souter is, apparently, a nit wit who isn’t capable of staying with the particulars.
Comrade Darkness
@geg6: It just bothers me when the left paints a broad demonized picture of a group that is actually quite diverse. Doesn’t do the movement any good to do that.
Zifnab
@geg6: In more affluent neighborhoods, that’s true. In poorer neighborhoods, home schooling becomes a more attractive option when you’re confronted with school gangs and high crime / violence rates.
If I’d been in this Middle School / High School, I’d seriously consider asking my parents to move me somewhere else. If I’d been a parent of a kid in this school, I’d seriously consider pushing the PTA to get this principal fired.
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
@rreay:
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is extraordinarily dangerous, the leading cause of liver failure the last time I saw stats.
harlana pepper
Well, considering our gov’t justified torture for the last few years and the fact that some “respected journalists” are still trying to defend it, is all the evidence I need to know that something is horribly, horribly wrong with this country. Noonan says sometimes you should just keep walking past the darkness that you know exists, don’t look too closely. In fact, just look the other way. When I heard about that statement by said “highly respected” journalist, the first thing that came to mind was ignoring physical and sexual child abuse. I guess she’d be okay with walking past that darkness as well.
Dork
If I were to ever find out that my daughter was stipped and/or touched by a school admin. based on an uncorroborated made-up story by a fellow classmate, I’m not certain that I could actually control my anger. While not insane enough to off this person, I’m pretty sure I would lack the restraint needed to not beat the shit out of said individual.
And I wonder if I’d even be convicted by a jury of my peers should my rage bring me to do so and get arrested. Gotta think that level-headed people with kids all think along these lines.
Comrade Darkness
@TheOfficialHatOnMyCat: It’s really easy to overdose on it because it is in everything. Something consumer advocates have been trying to get a braindead FDA to change for a decade. Cold medicines, for example are nearly always one or two symptom relievers AND acetaminophen. If you don’t understand what you are doing or can’t read 5pt pale green on white print on the back of a box, you can very easily take a cough medicine, a decongestant, and then think, hey I’ll take some tylenol and get a triple dose without even knowing it.
Cat Lady
Honestly, these kids today just don’t stand a chance. I think that the point of conservatism as expressed through puritanism is to turn everyone into a criminal, and/or an indentured servant to their student loans and credit cards. If health care doesn’t get passed, then they’ll be indebted to hospitals and doctors too. The next generation needs to take over everything, and it can’t happen soon enough.
Coming out of the press’s finest hour with Watergate and thinking that Vietnam was the final lesson learned about interventionism, then f’in’ Reagan and Wall Street “greed is good”, we boomers have really fucked it all up. Sorry.
Dracula
@Punchy: What Punchy said.
NAMBLA just added “principal” next to “priest” on their list of “Favorable Jobs”.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, you probably would, because some a$$hole DA would probably succeed at suppressing the underlying basis for why you beat the crap out of the guy.
John Cole
@Cat Lady: Speaking of indentured servants, did anyone see Captain Ed yesterday try to pretend that calling someone an indentured servant was the same thing as calling them a slave.
I swear to goodness these folks learned nothing in school. Which, I guess, makes sense, since I learned in the SCOTUS yesterday that they spent all their time in school getting stuff jammed in their knickers.
harlana pepper
Totally OT, but thx for the Tunch pic. Just what I needed today. Looka that sweet face! Ornery? I still don’t buy it. I swear, you get mad at people for making fun of his weight and now here you are slandering his character! For shame!
Nah, the problem is obviously with you and your inability to read kitty mind. You *must* work on that! :)
Interrobang
The psychology biz has a name for the phenomenon that causes situations like this: “rule internalisation.” You can spot rule internalisation when the justification for doing anything is “because that’s how we do it, that’s why.” Rule internalisation is the psychological foundation on which draconian zero-tolerance policies are built and operated.
While humans’ capacity to internalise rules allows them to do all sorts of nifty things by rote without actually thinking about them, it also creates situations where humans can do all sorts of nasty things without thinking about them, or the consequenses down the road. Jurisprudence by rule internalisation is probably the largest policy malfunction of the modern state…
rreay
@Comrade Darkness:
The point was meant to be a general one. OTC drugs aren’t safe drugs.
There is the slightest glimmer of actual reasoning behind school zero tolerance policies even for OTC drugs. Even so they are making a policy-mountain out of a mole-glimmer and just because there is some theoretical thought behind a policy doesn’t make it a dumb-as-a-post thing to do.
Back to topic though, nothing justifies this. I’m with John, the fact that we are actually having to argue this in any court shows that something is fundamentally broken.
Cat Lady
@John Cole:
I’m glad you read those assholes so I don’t have to. ;>
Apparently they were all out sick on the days that socialism and fascism were discussed, too.
Cat Lady
Assholes = fine, soc i a lism = moderation.
harlana pepper
btw, my grandfather, who was a highly respected principal and superindent of schools (and who is still loved and remembered by his former students (now in their 50’s and older!), has to be whirling in his grave right now.
JK
God save the American people from this dishonorable Supreme Court.
Bong hits for Jesus forever
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
@Comrade Darkness:
Fear not, the Bush FDA has been watching out for you and approving the labels.
Heh.
NonyNony
@John Cole:
No, but I did see that the Huffington Post is pointing out that the “Indentured Servant” quote that RFK was supposed to have said was made up out of thin air by ABC News.
Huh. ABC News manufacturing controversy out of nothing. Excellent journamalism there, folks.
El Cid
@Cat Lady: Earlier it was suggested that the problem with the word soci@lism was not the word itself but that it contained the same word as the vast, vast numbers of spambots trying to post messages about the dick drug “ci@alis”.
PhoenixRising
Watch the video of the kid and her mom, at the ACLU web site.
Note that Safford, Arizona is a town containing some white folks whose grandparents were ranchers and a bunch of Apaches.
As far as the presentation indicates, Savanna seems not to have a dad to punch these idiots in the mouth at the grocery store.
They picked their victim knowing more than you do now about the sociology of their town.
For that alone, for choosing to violate this child’s fundamental rights and basic human dignity because they knew they could get away with it, they should be charged with assault on a minor.
celticdragon
I’d be there with you. I’m telling my son when he comes in from school that he is never to allow anyone to touch him or make him undress. Period. End of discussion. I will be asking the school principal just what the policy here is. If somebody violates my son’s person in this way, one or more people will end up at a hospital.
Martin
So schools are stepping over parental authority by teaching sex-ed, but aren’t by strip searching the kids.
Fixed, and yeah, count me in as well. At the very least I’d drain my life savings suing everyone in sight for any reason I could possibly think of. They’d go broke defending themselves. And that’s assuming I didn’t already put them in a coma with my favorite shovel.
Comrade Darkness
@rreay: Schools arguing that it’s too difficult to differentiate what’s dangerous and what’s not is BS when a copies of the PDR are plentiful and cheap. I mean it’s an educational institution right, but they are taking the position that ruling over students from a stance of uneducated ignorance is optimal?
Zuzu's Petals
Ne-ver mind.
Buck
How about some of you guys educating me on “in loco parentis”
I always interpreted that to mean that while I was at school those guys owned me.
Send in the dogs and search students and cars!
I always left my dope at home. Never carried aspirins.
For the record I think this is all bullshit but in America today I would not be surprised to find out that waterboarding students is perfectly acceptable.
Persia
@celticdragon:
Ah, but as PhoenixRising pointed out right above you, it probably won’t be your kid. It’ll be a kid they think is ‘safe’ to pick on. And that’s the most disgusting thing of all.
NutellaonToast
@Zandar:
Yeah, that’s kind of what WARfucking entails, dude.
NutellaonToast
deleted double post.
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
@PhoenixRising:
For a good look at Safford, you can’t beat this movie, which is a great classic worth watching for its own sake.
A good deal of the film was shot on location in Safford.
Roger Moore
@rreay:
That’s specifically a problem with acetaminophen (paracetamol), not something with OTC pain relievers in general. That’s why it’s such a bad joke that Tylenol is advertised as the safe alternative to aspirin. Yes, it lacks some of the bad side effects of aspirin and related NSAIDs, but causing liver failure seems like a much more important drawback.
Kirk Spencer
@Dork:
I would be able to resist. I’ve been there – or close enough. My daughter wasn’t stripped, but the treatment she received was … Let’s simplify it by noting the other children were related to the school administrators and leave it there. As a result, we started home-schooling her.
We moved to another district, and for a group of reasons we decided to try school again. This time it worked. We were prepared, however, to pull her out and do the rest of her time to graduation at home if it became necessary.
I’m still angry at that school district’s administration.
BenA
I’m just at a loss here…. EVEN if you accept the fact that there’s a lesser standard for a reasonable search in a school setting… which I don’t buy for a second… it’s not this low.
Fwiffo
What high-school kid is so hard-up for advil that they’re ready to pop a couple that had been swimming around in a classmate’s underpants all day?
Seriously though, I think the appropriate response in this case is to beat the shit out of the school administrators responsible.
Corner Stone
@Michael:
@ Michael and a few others posting here –
I completely get the inherent rage thing, being a father myself, but I certainly wouldn’t compound the issue by giving them what they want. If you (speaking generally) assualt someone you’ve now given the distraction they can use to sweep this issue back under the rug. And then do it again to some other poor child who has no way to resist their Authoriteh!
The only rational response here should have been to call the parent. If the school didn’t do that, and I found out after the sexual assault (because that’s what this is), I would sweep down on all these motherfuckers with about 6 lawyers and just start unleashing absolute vengeance hell through the legal system. They wouldn’t be able to order a burger without court permission by the time I was done with them.
Then I’d pay a couple guys to find this motherfucker and break every bone in his body.
Corner Stone
@NonyNony:
And here’s the other thing I just don’t get. These people AGREED to strip search this 13 yr old? I’m pretty sure I would’ve taken my chances and said No to this one.
jenniebee
Is it just me, or did a lawyer really just argue in the Supreme Court that we have to strip search little girls to catch the hypothetical girls who are hiding dry erase markers in their vajayjays? You know, for sniffing.
I need a drink.
Corner Stone
And I thought I was pissed about the whole uniforms to school issue.
Contra to what I posted earlier, I can not even begin to imagine the awful bloody rage I would fly into if this had been done to my child. Just allowing myself to think about it makes my heart hurt.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Cat Lady: Honestly, these kids today just don’t stand a chance.
I totally agree. The kids I’ve never had should be very grateful to me – not only do they get to avoid having me as a dad, they get to avoid going to fascist school. I thought power-tripping administrators were bad in the 1970s, yeesh.
Delia
Lithwick’s Slate piece makes it pretty clear that we should have a SCOTUS of at least five women. At least the the chances of them making rulings on the teen porn value of a case would go down significantly.
TenguPhule
Yes.
We have reached the point where Japan can lecture us on improper attention to underage girls.
Cat Lady
Like everything else to do with schools, there will be a two tier policy re strip searches: poor kids with parents who either aren’t lawyers or don’t have lawyers to scare administrators with will suffer disproportionately. In my wealthy suburban school district, administrators could not bring students to the office without being told by the parents that their child was not to be addressed unless the family lawyer, or the parent who was probably a lawyer, was present, or consulted. And they weren’t. No matter what SCOTUS decides, they never will, either. At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, school administrators are political. They know who to be careful of.
TenguPhule
But then the odds of bans on video games go up significantly.
Adrienne
Here’s my take on it. Schools officials should NEVER strip search a child. Never, under ANY circumstance should this happen.
For a strip search of a minor to EVER justifiably occur there should be 1) a strong underlying suspicion that an actual LAW is being broken, not just a violation of an arbitrary school rule/policy and 2) conducted by a law enforcement agency in the presence of the minors parents.
The Fourth Amendment protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures. For a search to be reasonable, the agency doing the search must have probable cause that the search will uncover illegal behavior or contraband. Since this strip search was not done under the reasonable suspicion of finding actual illegal activity, there is no way one could construe this to NOT be a violation of her constitutional rights. She was subjected to a strip search, because some girl who’d gotten caught with Advil and wanted to get a deal so she told them Savanna provided it to her, in search of something that’s not even illegal and her parents weren’t notified or consulted. Even if they had found Advil on her, I’d argue that this was STILL a violation of her constitutional rights.
Schools should have the ability to search a student’s belongings if they believe the student is violating school policy, but never strip search them. If the school has reason to believe the student is violating the LAW, they should turn the matter over the police, and let them handle any further searches, etc, that may be necessary.
Further, how fucking stupid is it that a public school has to notify your parents before they GIVE you an Advil, but not before they strip search you to find one?
Adrienne
Further, in addition to the suit alleging a violation of my child’s Constitutional right to not be unreasonably searched, I woul d have marched my ass right on down to the local police precinct and filed CRIMINAL sexual assault on a minor and child endangerment charges against every person involved. I would haul every adult in that school who was involved in making the decision to strip search my child into court and at the very least, it would be on their record, at best they would go to trial, be found guilty and go to jail. It is that serious.
Cat Lady
@Xecky Gilchrist:
You don’t sound that bad. ;)
If I were thinking about having kids now, frankly, I wouldn’t. And my kids are at the age to be thinking about it. I blurted out the other day how I wouldn’t if I were them, and I really meant it. It’s sad.
blahblahblah
@Corner Stone:
The Supreme Court appears to be determined to close off the legal angle to relief. What does a parent do when state education officials asserts their so-called ‘right’ to forcibly detain and conduct an invasive body search of your child without parental consent or even knowledge … and the courts agree?!?!?
Michael
That’s the problem – our social contract has been breached, judging by the current state of the case law and the judicial colloquy with the lawyers on the argument. It wouldn’t matter what your lawyers did – there would be a Rule 12 Motion to Dismiss, and the case would be disposed of neatly with a dismissal.
The only way these idiots change their behavior is with a beating – they don’t try this shit at ghetto schools – those folks don’t give a damn about jail and will administer a beat-down. Nice white folks from the burbs normally meekly take the bullshit when the judge says “case dismissed”, so you find this kind of crap far more common in nice, cooperative suburban places.
jenniebee
I’m trying to think of what possible excuse they could have for not contacting her parents first.
Did they think someone was in imminent danger from the advil exploding or releasing some kind of serin gas or something?
Did they suspect the advil was in her undies the whole time, and that the evidence might dissolve if not found promptly?
What I want to know is, if the dangers posed by the presence of an unmonitored Advil on school grounds were high enough to justify strip searching a pubescent girl, didn’t the administration fall down on the job of protecting the other students from the horrors of pain relief by not conducting a full body cavity search? Nobody even checked to make sure that Ms. Redding wasn’t furtively clutching the pill between her buttocks as she was shaking out her panties.
The school has a duty to put a stop to the epidemic of anal-enhanced pain killers that is tearing our public school systems apart, thus losing us an untold number of football games every year. Not only is an advil eaten fresh out of someone’s butt cheeks a gateway to other, harder analgesics (like excedrine and codone and some of the other stuff on my nightstand), it’s also a gateway to felching. And that way lies madness.
Corner Stone
@Michael:
Hmmm, your beat-down logic appeals to my inner Texan. I cede this argument to you sir.
ETA – my original plan called for a merciless and complete beating, just with an attempt at plausible deniability on my part. I get to stay out of jail and still have the SOB in and out of hospital treatment programs for the rest of his miserable life.
Win-Win.
Adrienne
@jenniebee: This is just chock full o’ win – on so many levels.
4tehlulz
@Michael: WAKE UP WHITE PEOPLE
Xecky Gilchrist
@Cat Lady: You don’t sound that bad. ;)
Nice of you to say so, but I can barely take care of a dog, let alone kids. All my houseplants die – and you should see my yard! I’d be a disaster with kids.
Not to mention there are a few genetic difficulties in my line that they’d be better off without.
kay
@Cat Lady:
Courts give almost complete deference to schools as far as rule-making. It’s really a bold-faced lie when we tell them their “constitutional rights don’t stop at the school house door”.
Sure they do.
As long as the rule ostensibly keeps order, and therefore furthers education, schools can do just about anything, unless there’s a state law that trumps, like those states that bar corporal punishment in schools, for example.
Adrienne
Where I come from, the parents wouldn’t have even needed to chance the jail time – the KID would have administered the beat down her damn self. I know I would have. That’s how we roll. I once threatened to kill a teacher for grabbing my arm. Imagine if those assholes would have told me to strip so they could search me for an Advil. I would have laughed and THEN punched someone.
Tonal Crow
Americans love to praise Liberty, but often fear and hate the thing itself. Thus, when a court suppresses evidence because it was collected in violation of the 4th Amendment, we blast “activist judges” who “freed a criminal on a technicality”. Similarly, we call any use of illegal drugs “abuse” and eagerly imprison millions for it. Then we prosecute teens for “producing child porn” by “sexting” nude photos of themselves to their friends, and, at the same time, earnestly endorse having school administrators examine kids’ pubic areas to prevent them from using the terrible addictive drug ibuprofen.
Sickness runs deep here.
Nemoudeis
What’s so new here? I remember them conducting strip searches at good ol’ Vince Lombardi High School since at least 1979!
Of course, nobody should be surprised then when the kids respond by blowing up all the high schools as a result …
“They’re ugly, ugly, ugly people …”
Corner Stone
@jenniebee:
Obviously they thought the advil was proof of a much larger drug muling operation. If they could find the advil then they’d know for sure that she had previously swallowed several little balloons of high grade heroin. They were afraid one package would rupture and she’d die of overdose.
Finding the advil would let them then go for the full monty, body cav search, hang her upside down til she coughed the smack out, or possibly force the principal to lay on top of her and apply repeated pumps and/or thrusts to her body in an attempt to pump her stomach and release the balloons.
Really, I think we’re missing the larger point her. They strip searched her in order to help her. Now she can free herself in the eyes of Allah.
kay
@Adrienne:
That’s what’s wrong with it. It’s mean. It’s humiliating and stupid and mean, and it didn’t even solve the problem.
Kindness, patience and common sense. That’s how good schools keep order.
gopher2b
@Adrienne:
That’s absolutely dead on. I would do all the same…right after I beat the living piss out of the principal.
When my daughter is old enough to understand these issues, I will tell her to fight, scratch, bite, spit, taze, use pepper spray….whatever one would do to fend off a sexual assault…if she ever found herself in in this situation.
Souter’s quote is unconscionable. The lawyer’s is criminal (regarding body cavity search being out of bounds only because teach are not trained….they don’t know how to teach kids to read or do basic math but that isn’t stopping them from trying).
MNPundit
After Columbine my highschool freaked out because I wear a trench coat (being a huge Highlander fan I got my first Trench Coat–even then I only used real ones that businessmen use, no BS dusters!–at age 16). They called me into the office.
Long story short, since it was a private school my parents were informed quickly and we really let the school administration have it because their concerns were ridiculous and I have not committed any criminal acts. I will however, if the opportunity presents itself, take revenge on the teacher who expressed concerns to the administration. It doesn’t burn in me everyday, but I’ll never forget it and if the opportunity presents itself to ruin him legally (such as being able to fire them) I will take it in a heartbeat.
Brachiator
@Comrade Darkness:
Yes, we are discussing a diverse group of morons here.
And what does this have to do with anything? Was the student incapable of reading? Are we saying that students cannot take OTC drugs with them to school, or that if they do so they must be accompanied by a registered nurse who will administer the required dose when necessary?
The common sense biz calls this stoopidity.
geg6
@Zifnab:
Well, no one on earth would ever characterize Beaver County, PA as an affluent area. In fact, the very idea makes me burst out laughing. You’re talking a valley in which the only major industry, steel, died in 1984 and which has found nothing at all to replace it. The median income is $44 thousand and change (about $5,000 less than the state’s) and only 18% of our population went to college. 18% of our population is over the age of 65. Seniors are only the second largest demographic; the largest is under the age of 18 (20%). I dare you to find a large group of young adults anywhere in this county. Hell, I’m unusual here and I’m 50.
The main reason people home school here is religious fanaticism and, though only 5% of our population is minority, keeping their kids away from the skeery black people (we don’t have brown here at all) who are disproportionately large populations at two of the local high schools.
Just to make it clear, although I don’t have much of any respect whatsoever for the whole home schooling movement because I see the problems it creates in those kids socially and academically when they get to higher education institutions like mine, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have no kids, never wanted kids, and I will never have kids now.
kay
Just for the record, they pass around prescription drugs stolen from parents like crazy. They’re clean and best of all, they’re free.
They’re really speedy at looking them up on the internets, and rejecting things like allergy medicine. There are local high school experts. They could sit for a pharmacy exam.
But, strip searches are ridiculous, and the facts in this case are egregious, which is probably why the lawyers brought this one. Good for them.
Maybe the Supremes will draw a line, but I doubt it. It’s schools and federal law, there’s a big issue with that, the whole local control argument, it’s the primacy of schools in rule-making, there are just a lot of barriers here.
Tim C.
The thing I don’t get is that the principal already has huge powers to remove the student from the classroom or school. Even if it’s a total overreaction to ibuprophen, expulsion would be within the legal power of the district. I can’t for the life of me, as a teacher, understand the need ever to go to a strip search. Even if we were talking about a bomb or a gun, the police are far better trained, and qualified to conduct such a search. Common sense tells me this is totally, utterly and completely out of bounds for public schools.
But since we are here, shouldn’t we start the meme about the out of control, activist, and paranoid Republican supreme court?
Kirk Spencer
I just finished reading the appeals court record, and this things is worse than I thought.
Skipping a lot of the intro, they had busted the actual culprit – a Marissa – for having the ibuprofen. When she turned out her pockets and opened her wallet pills were found on her.
They stripsearched Marissa.
Now this case is about Savanna Redding, who Marissa accused of providing the pills in the first place, who did NOT have pills on her, who when pills weren’t found was ALSO subjected to a strip search.
But the rage starts with Marissa. They had what they needed to ‘bust’ her. The administration, however, went the extra mile to ensure they had all the ‘evidence’ prior to suspension pending expulsion. They did not call her parents first – in fact, didn’t call till later. They did not call the police.
They just decided they needed to get ‘the rest of the evidence’ and so they strip searched her.
Yes, the innocent who was searched is worse. But the entirety of the logic (tenuous as it is) collapses before Savanna Redding is touched.
It’s worse.
TenguPhule
Ditto.
My training as a substitute teacher was quite strict on that point, *no-touchee* period. We could call the cops in if we believed there was a danger of weapons, but absolutely under no circumstances were we allowed anything close to doing what these idiots are doing.
KRK
@JK:
Don’t be such a Dick.
TenguPhule
That should have been the first red flag to the lawyers arguing for the schools.
You’re pretty much required to notify the cops for actions above and beyond normal school discipline. Between the teacher’s unions and the parents, it’s been like that for years.
Tonal Crow
@Cat Lady:
…and then use the threat of prosecution as leverage to prevent citizens from controlling their government.
Cyrus
@blahblahblah:
Well, a parent in that situation has several choices. Here are a few of them.
(1) Carve out a place in the local community to immunize your kids from stuff like this. That is, get elected to the school board or heavily involved in the PTA. This is very time-consuming and might not even be possible in some districts, and the benefit for anyone other than your own children is uncertain at best, but on the bright side anyone can do it.
(2) Campaign for a law or constitutional amendment for a right to privacy or something like that. This would be a full-time job; as soon as activists’ backs are turned all the pressures that got us into the current mess would overwhelm it and get it repealed or hollowed out.
(3) Home school.
(4) Put up with the risk of your kid getting stripped by school administrators. Statistically speaking, it’s vanishingly unlikely.
When/if I have kids I’m mostly likely to go for the first choice, but I’m glad it’s not a problem I have to deal with now and I don’t envy those who do.
@Brachiator:
Yes, that’s the policy at the school where the strip search happened. Any drugs, even Advil, must be left at home or brought to the school nurse and administered by him or her during the day.
Adrienne
Note that I said, even if they had found Advil on her, the strip search would STILL be a violation of her fourth amendment rights – along the lines of “Marissa”. Why HER parents aren’t ALSO suing, is beyond me.
TenguPhule
I believe one of the things on trial here is if they can sue.
Adrienne
Same principle. Why are they not parties to THIS lawsuit? Why did they not file their own lawsuit alleging the same manner of violations and, since this case made it to the SCOTUS, I’m sure they would have accepted hers as well and joined them to be heard together since they involve the same manner of violation.
Krista
Pretty sad when a teenage girl has more logic, humanity and common sense than the entire goddamned SCOTUS.
For a school to strip-search a minor in the first place, and then considering it was for a freaking Advil, and then considering it was on nothing more damning than another student’s say-so, and then to actually defend that action, and then to say that the only reason they don’t do cavity searches is because they’re not qualified?
I don’t even know what to say. The mind boggles.
Brachiator
@Cyrus:
This stupidity has given me a headache. I need an aspirin.
So, let’s see. There is no medical reason that a nurse has to dole out an OTC drug when a school kid is capable of reading a freaking label. There is no legal reason to consider an OTC drug on the person of a school kid as anything remotely resembling a narcotic.
So were are left with the inanity of a zero tolerance policy because the Educational Industrial Complex is too stupid for nuance.
And yet I am supposed to support teachers because they can teach my kids critical thinking skills.
To hell with the aspirin. I need a drink.
When’s the inevitable Supreme Court case involving the student placed into medical quarantine because she had a bag of peanuts in her purse?
Persia
I love how the police has to have a warrant to search my house, but my kid is fair game. If they’re just property with no rights, why aren’t my rights as a parent being protected?
Comrade Dread
It is helpful, in understanding this mentality, that we now live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable, on the basis of a paid informant and a rubber stamped warrant, to kick open someone’s door (not even the right door necessarily) at 3am, throw flash bangs in someone’s home, shoot the family pets, and possibly the occupant themselves over drugs, and few people complain about it.
Fewer still are actually punished for their actions. Most get promoted or awards.
Maybe we should be glad they didn’t call the police.
Cat Lady
@Tonal Crow:
And it would work well, no? Also, if you have a CORI and some credit black marks to carry through life with you, you’ll be consigned to some third level of employment hell for most of your working life. That’s just full of win for the current and future WalMart’s of the world. I’m glad I’m not conspiracy theorist or a DFH or anything. Oh, wait…
Cat Lady
@kay:
I know, haven’t these people seen To Sir With Love? Up the Down Staircase? Dangerous Minds? C’mon people!
TenguPhule
Now we just need the addresses for Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfield, John Ashcroft, Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Tom Delay and company.
GregB
What are often described as excesses of the left-wing nanny state are actually the ills of the rightwing para-militarized police state.
-G
TenguPhule
Because they’re not *your* property. The kids belong to the
panty sniffing old menstate.passerby
@Comrade Darkness:
You beat me to it. And I’d like to add that it is unfortunate that you had to include the not-a-troll disclaimer. Zero-tolerance can be applied to anything, even rational arguments.
To wit, geg6:
Just to make it clear, although I don’t have much of any respect whatsoever for the whole home schooling movement because I see the problems it creates in those kids socially and academically when they get to higher education institutions like mine, I don’t have a dog in this fight.
TenguPhule
You can thank idiot parents who insisted on making these rules and/or making them necessary because “My Bobby wouldn’t do a thing like that! I’ll sue you!!”
Comrade Dread
Wouldn’t help.
Democratic leaders are often just as bad on civil liberties when it comes to “protecting the children”.
You see, we must abuse and degrade our children to save them, after all.
These bureaucrats are f***ing c***s, and should at a minimum be fired.
TenguPhule
Actually, most public school districts no longer allow nurses to treat students beyond a bandaid precisely because of fear of lawsuits.
Drugs are totally out of the question. Again, fear of lawsuits.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
TenguPhule
And just think, we missed having more of them appointed by McCain by *that* much.
Xanthippas
Have to say in my area too (North Texas) it’s mostly fear of dinosaurs and the U.N. that prompts parents to keep kids at home.
Personally, I plan on sending my kids to private school. At least there dollar signs will go through their heads before they do anything this stupid.
NonyNony
@Brachiator:
There is a worry by school officials that they will get sued if a kid who isn’t supposed to take an OTC drug takes it because they’re stupid. A kid who has allergies, or some kind of drug interaction that the parents know about but the kid is unaware of. That at least used to be the reason for the “zero tolerance” of OTC drugs in my old high school – we were barred from bringing in even Tylenol and if we needed one were were supposed to go see a nurse (and this was in the late 80s when ZT policies weren’t quite yet so hysterically stupid).
Um, who said teachers were supposed to be teaching your kids “critical thinking” skills? Perhaps you’re thinking of college professors or something. Primary and Secondary public school teachers are supposed to teach kids to submit to authority, not to rock the boat, turn in assignments on time, and in general be good little factory workers rather than the rabble that the late 19th century factory owners had to put up with when the standards and practices of our current education system were codified. These lessons are taught through the study of math, reading, science and other skills that are by themselves considered somewhat useful, but teaching the kids not to be such shiftless bums was the primary reason behind the structure of our education system. In fact, the skills themselves were considered of secondary importance for students in the public school system right up until the Soviets launched Sputnik and suddenly it became VERY important that we churn out lots of people who actually understood math, science and a host of other specialized fields to keep the Red Menace at bay. (Elite children at non-Catholic private schools had a very different emphasis on their education, of course.)
IME, any teacher who actually attempts to teach “critical thinking skills” gets a stern talking to by their school administrators because of the parental complaints and complaints from other teachers. Teaching kids to think critically leads to them thinking critically about everything, which leads to them questioning authority, which leads to parents and teachers upset that little Jimmy is questioning the Law that they are in the process of Laying Down. In general, most parents want schools to teach their kids “skills” – reading, writing, math – but balk at the idea of actually giving the kids tools to think for themselves.
(Can you tell the lament of someone who really wanted to be a High School teacher until he found out how all the sausage really got made? Our school systems are fucked up beyond belief, and it starts with the parents and the local community who don’t want to take responsibility for it.)
DrZZ
You obviously haven’t been a teacher. A kid takes out some pills in your classroom. How much time and effort should the teacher take out of the lesson to determine if those pills are OTC or something else? What are the consequences if the teacher is wrong? Are you claiming that teachers should be able to recognize in seconds what the composition of a pill is? Now multiply that by 30-40 kids per class for 5 or so class periods and please tell me how anything would get done. There are only two practical strategies:
The kids get to take whatever they want in class and the teacher has no responsibility for the student’s choices (fat chance)
or there is a hard rule that any and all medicine that needs to be taken is handled by the school nurse (or some other non-classroom place).
Of course either strategy doesn’t require strip searching to work.
Comrade Dread
I will concur from experience.
The last thing administrators (or any politician) really wants are hordes of critically thinking subjects who can see through the bullshit they spew.
Mary-A
In high school, and I am not proud of it, some buds and I went around at lunch and stole little things out of peoples yards-decorations mostly. We were bored and looking for a cheap thrill. After school, my girlfriends did it again this time taking a motorized scooter of some kind-I rode the bus home that day. We were reported to the police because of our lunchtime activities, but those items were immediately returned. The motor scooter wasn’t, and our names were at the top of the list when it was reported stolen. We were called into the office and the principal threatened us with expulsion if we didnt sign the confession-it was an hour later that I realized I had nothign to do with the motor scooter, but it was too late. We didnt have the money to fight anyone in court and I did my deferred adjudication and went on.
My parents were never contacted, and they were shocked when they found out. What if it had been a major crime? What if I had signed on to jail time-because I was a stupid kid, but also because I believed that principal was actually motivated by my best interests.
That was a little confession, to a stupid, petty little crime-what else have we given these administrators “the right to do”?
The whole “principal as acting guardian” has to go, there is no reason for someone to be that pwerful and unaccountable.
geg6
@passerby:
Um, I don’t see where I said I had zero tolerance for anything, even the home schoolers. I said that based on my experience with this population, I have little respect for the movement because the majority of the ones we see don’t make it here. It may be different in different parts of the country or at different institutions. And I honestly don’t care what people do with their children as far as schooling. As long as they don’t blame me or my colleagues for the failure of their children to adapt to our campus and academic culture, they could never teach them a thing and it wouldn’t matter to me a bit.
Adrienne
Considering that a minor can actually, you know, PURCHASE these drugs themselves, why there would be a requirement that you have to have it dispensed by the nurse is just, teh stupid. Also, quite frankly, the way I would feel about it would be that the school nurse doesn’t need to know all of my personal business – what if a kid has drugs prescribed for a UTI or something?
Further, what if a kid has a long term chronic disease/illness like diabetes? They are probably trusted to administer their insulin anywhere else, but school? No tolerance. I’m allergic to bee stings and when I was younger I was REQUIRED to have the Epi-Pen on my person in case I was stung – not in the nurses office b/c by the time I got there I might be delirious from lack of oxygen if I didn’t already pass out. This type of rule is just an accidental death away from kicking up a shitstorm.
Donald G
While all the righteous talk of a massive asskickin’ of the perpetrators of this obscenity and the affront to the rights and personal dignity of our children is cathartic and helps us feel better, the authoritarian fascists in charge of our educational system (and their enablers in government institutions and the larger community) have means of their own to discredit dissent and thwart reform of these abuses.
For example, poor word choice in voicing your justifiable outrage becomes “making terroristic threats”. A minor’s speaking up to protect himself/herself and others becomes “showing disrespect for authority” and in many school systems is an offense requiring disciplinary action. Physical action in defense of oneself or others becomes “assault”.
Among the many “wars” this country is engaged in, such as the War on Drugs, and the War on Alcohol, and the War Against Fun, perhaps the most pernicious is the authoritarians’ quarter-century long War Against Adolescence, which has made our children into virtual prisoners with few rights that administrators are bound to respect.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
It would be nice to think that the insane opinion the Supreme Court is going to put out on this issue would spark the states to pass some Kelo v. City of New London-esque rebuttal statutes, where the state legislatures prohibit school officials from EVER strip-searching a child. It would be nice to think that the public is well-informed enough about this case to get outraged over sanctioned pedophilia.
It would be nice to think that. But yeah, probably it’s going to take catching some principal using it as an excuse to rape 5-year-olds before anything gets done about it.
passerby
@geg6:
Sorry to use you as an example geg6. In your original post I thought you were throwing the baby out with the bathwater regarding home-schooling.
There are valid reasons to home-school–including religious ones. I guess you don’t have to respect those who choose to home-school. But it seems traditional schooling produces enough fail that home-schooling seems worth a shot.
tde
I was listening to the coverage of this on the morning TV news here in SF, which, last time I heard was a pretty major market.
The anchor pronounced Justice Souter as Justice “Sow-ter”.
Who has time for outrage when the media is unfamiliar with who sits on the Supreme Court?
binzinerator
@The Grand Panjandrum:
My daughter starts school next year. If it were mine, I would be in prison too.
As others have noted, this kind of tyranny is what we get when we declare a war on drugs with zero tolerance, combined with a society that has shown a taste for authoritarianism.
I read this quote from Phillip Zelikow the other day over at Sully‘s (fittingly sully called his post “What actual tyranny is”):
What had seemed obvious to me when we learned of our government’s widespread torturing of people — and only the apologists and the fools could believe it wasn’t an official policy — is that it was the emergence of something more ugly, more insidious and more frightening.
What it meant was our society was beginning to accept this kind of thuggery, and even bend over backwards to find excuses for it. And that means act that come from a similar mindset, disgusting and degrading acts like strip-seaching a pre-teen girl at school, will become mainstream practices.
Unfortunately, as shown by that fucking asshole thug-enabling Scalia, I am not taking any bets that our federal courts will see this as for what it blatantly is: police state thuggery, the kind every Brownshirt would also instantly recognize.
geg6
@passerby:
Well, as I said now three times, I base my perceptions on my experience. And the home schoolers who come here have extreme difficulty adjusting socially, academically, or both. If home schoolers are better at preparing their children for college and the workforce elsewhere, perhaps they should come and teach the ones here how to do it. It’s hard to respect people who fail more consistently than even our worst public or private schools here and who seem to think an SAT score has any correlation whatsoever with GPA or degree completion. I will, however, say that the home schoolers do come here with excellent bona fides in standardized testing ability, creationism, and ability to quote Bible passages. So I will give them that.
YellowJournalism
Welcome to 2009. I have a friend who is actually fighting her child’s school about this very issue. They do not want her child to carry an Epi-pen. They want it in the office, to be administered by a secretary or whoever is in there, I guess, because there is no school nurse. Another child in the school has diabetes and the parents are fighting the fact that their son cannot take his insulin pills on his own. These are junior high age children who have lots of experience with their illness and the medications.
Tonal Crow
@Persia:
Cons would like little better than to permit the police to search your house without a warrant, too. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Court yesterday limited the circumstances under which police can search an arrestee’s car. I half-expected them simply to overturn the exclusionary rule, which would have rendered the 4th Amendment meaningless.
Blue Raven
When I was in high school back in the early 1980’s, we were told that we had no free speech rights in a student newspaper because the school’s administration had control of all content related to the school. Children have had fewer rights than adults for far longer than that. All that said, strip-searching a teenager over an Advil… well, that’s all been said already. Chalk up one more outraged adult here.
Digressing to the indentured servant/slave thing, though, I think a lot of people have the strange idea that indentured servitude was wholly voluntary and honorably conducted by the indenture holders. What’s the practical difference between “your grandchildren will be working to pay off this debt you owe me and adding to it at the same time” and “your grandchildren will be owned by me”? The largest difference when the practices are looked at is the form of force involved in the process being initiated. “Sign this or you rot in jail while your children die of malnutrition” versus a gun to the head. ISes were punished for running away. Female ISes faced contract extensions if they turned up pregnant. You were bought and sold as an IS as well. And many Irish who were called ISes were kidnapped from their homes and shipped to the Caribbean, especially under Cromwell. It was possible to be treated well as an IS. But the odds of that were not good. So to my mind, the difference between the two is a matter of degree after you get past the intent and PR.
jim
Cui bono?
*
A ruling like this, right on the heels of a massive corporate campaign to medicate kids, serves to increase cognitive dissonance … conditions kids to avoid any illicit psychoactive means of expanding consciousness, hopefully for life – & to regard themselves as powerless property & not living beings … shows that authorities are willing to get tough on drug-abuse while letting them further erode basic human rights (today your kids at school, tomorrow you at work) … & traumatizes students with the constant threat of being treated like felons, thus making it that much harder for them to think about ANYTHING clearly – again, preferably for life.
*
That’s one hell of a lot of pure win for pro-police-state power-pimps, all in one convenient package. The potential for pervs (who gravitate toward positions of authority whenever possible, all the better to get off scot-free) to exploit it is just the cherry on their Fascism Sundae – a golden opportunity to express shock & outrage over the inevitable sex-scandals, & produce yet another panic.
*
“Prohibition against booze was totally different from today’s War On Drugs because shut up, that’s why.”
wingnuts to iraq
first off…
too old
I need to change lines of work.
Mnemosyne
@DrZZ:
Maybe I was a particularly nerdy kid, but I find it difficult to believe that even a high school kid would be openly popping illegal Oxycontin or Vicodin during class, much less a middle-schooler. Worrying that the kid might be taking illegal drugs during class in front of the teacher seems like worrying that tigers are going to begin roaming the halls of the school. Sure, you might get some kid who’s so addicted that s/he can’t wait until break time to get high, but a halfway decent teacher should probably have noticed that something was wrong with that student well before you get to the in-class pill-popping stage.
TenguPhule
You’d be surprised. I have seen them do this and to my eternal shame the teachers merely looked the other way.
jenniebee
@DrZZ:
You know, back when I was in grade school, students popped whatever pills they needed in class without worrying about it and teachers would send kids to the principal if they suspected that the kid was high. Teachers weren’t then and still aren’t responsible for keeping kids from taking pills; they were and are responsible for reporting observable unacceptable behaviors, we’ve just redefined “unacceptable behaviors” down from “shows up with bloodshot eyes and reeking of weed, plus incessant giggling” to “suspected of possessing something that could be mistaken for something else that someone can imagine a way to get high with.” Kids are now being held responsible for adminstrators’ voyeuristic manias.
For an added bonus, the nurse’s office was an actual office containing an actual nurse, and not a drawer in the school secretary’s desk containing a box of bandaids and a stack of cheap maxi-pads. But you tell young people today that, they won’t believe you. They won’t!
AhabTRuler
@jenniebee: And phones were big, and ugly, and had cords, and you couldn’t type with them (although you could bludgeon someone to death with them, try that with your fancy cell-phones)!
Brachiator
@NonyNony:
Doesn’t wash. A parent could give the school a note letting them know what OTC medication the kid has or is taking. And I will bet you a school lunch that there are practically zero schools with any drugs or equipment on hand for dealing with a kid who has had an allergic reaction to a drug.
In any event, I don’t see the connection to a need for a strip search.
Not at all. This is the persistent claim of California teachers’ unions. By the by, I don’t know many college professors who know jack about critical thinking.
What? Catholics were taught to obey the Pope and to love Baby Jesus?
IME, any teacher who actually attempts to teach “critical thinking skills” gets a stern talking to by their school administrators because of the parental complaints and complaints from other teachers.
I disagree here. Too many teachers don’t think, so they are incapable of teaching anyone else to think.
No, thank God.
I’d roll the kid out into the hallway and continue with my class. But as you note, I haven’t been a teacher.
brendancalling
@michael@14 and grand panjandrum@26: if anything like this ever happens to my kid, who is 5 now, i will not sue the school or administrators.
instead, i will do what any loving parent would do: i would put the person who laid hands on my kid in his or her grave. not the hospital, because they could file an assault and battery charge: a hole in the ground, somewhere out in the woods.
however, i would beat that person, male or female, before taking their life.
Krista
Unbelievable. I mean, do they really think that kids are going to start abusing Epi-pens and insulin? And like you said, these are kids who know damn well what their condition is, how to administer their own medication, and could probably write a dissertation on how their medication works.
And unfortunately, it’ll probably take the death of an allergic student who was forcibly separated from his Epi-pen for common sense to make a reappearance.
HyperIon
@PhoenixRising:
My knowledge of Safford (apart from Lost in America) comes from a 70s grad school colleague who grew up there. He described it as a predominantly Mormon town. His non-Mormon father ran for school board in the 60s (IIRC) to counteract the rule of the Mormons. He regaled me with stories of “growing up non-Mormon in Safford” that I found amazing, having never encountered Mormon culture firsthand. Oh, and I assumed they all lived in Salt Lake City.
Comrade Dread
They already can search your home and business without a warrant depending upon the law in your municipality. They just need to coordinate their search with a regulatory agency that does inspections and tag along.
gypsy howell
If pedophilia becomes legal in the public school system thanks to our supreme court, I predict we will be seeing a lot more pedophiles directing their careers towards school administration. Mmmmm… candy.
Tonal Crow
@Comrade Dread:
Homes are quite different from businesses for 4th Amendment purposes. In Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), the Court held that the 4th Amendment bars prosecution of an individual for refusing a regulatory search of his home. Presumably the holding would apply a fortiori to police tagging along on a regulatory search. I don’t have a Shepards handy to see whether the Court’s cut back Camara since, but I don’t think so (except as to those receiving specific government benefits, like welfare).
LanceThruster
Isn’t this where they went wrong before? They focus on some issue of lesser importance, while critical issues are ignored.
I remember reading about a Xian conservative who thought that Bush was a good choice because they were “values voters,” but realized that the destruction of the nation’s economic well-being was hurting people far more than they thought gay rights and pro-choice stances ever could (better late than never I suppose).
Now, for the sake of a few extra shekels in the pockets of bazillionaires, they’ll overlook the Reich Wing march towards fascism and demand torturers not be held accountable.
Just another f*cking day in Bizarro World.