I don't know what to say about this. From Court rules school officials acted properly in strip search:
"Safford Middle School officials did not violate the civil rights of a 13-year-old Safford girl when they forced her to disrobe and expose her breasts and pubic area four years ago while looking for a drug, according to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
"The justices voted 2-1 in favor of the Safford School District on Sept. 21. The decision upheld a federal district court's summary judgement that Safford Middle School Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, school nurse Peggy Schwallier and administrative assistant Helen Romero did not violate the girl's Fourth Amendment rights on Oct. 8, 2003, when they subjected her to a strip search in an effort to find Ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory drug sold over the counter and in prescription strengths."
Read the whole article for details. Here's another article.
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Technorati tags: public, school, abuse, power, children, education
7 comments:
A strip search to find an over-the-counter pain reliever? Are you freaking kidding me?
I mean, I MIGHT be able to understand this if they were looking for coke or another illegal substance. But this? TOTALLY RIDICULOUS.
This is so scary.
I can't imagine how embarrassed and humiliated the poor girl was.
"...the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said..."
That pretty much explains everything for me.
The "special characteristics of the school environment" in their mind is exactly that students "shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate". Their words say one thing, their votes another.
I'm not too surprised that there was a strip search. With over six million teachers and all the people in school administration there are bound to be a few who do stupid things.
What really bothers me is that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said this was OK.
Wow. It seems to me the principal must be perverted to do a "strip-search" on a 13-year-old over an OTC drug. Even if they thought she had an illegal drug, they could have done a pat-down or taken her to the police station rather than make her get naked in the school.
The good news is that I think this practice is atypical. I went to public school for 13 years, and I never experienced or heard of anything like this.
I agree, the good news is this probably happens very rarely.
The bad news is that the courts said it is OK.
The ruling was just reverse, just barely.
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