This was originally posted back in August 2008, but due to acquiring some, uh, wrong incoming links, I took it down for a re-write. Since the story is back in the news, here it is, re-posted (and updated).
Savana Redding, a 13-year old eighth-grade honor student at the time (2003), was forced to strip for Arizona school officials who were determined to find some ibuprofen.
Vice Principal Kerry Wilson had found one non-prescription naproxen pill and a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (equivalent to 2 over-the-counter pills each) in the pocket of another student who claimed Savana Redding was her source. Based on this "tip," Wilson promptly pulled Savana out of class.
An honor's student with no prior history of trouble or drug-use, Savana agreed to a search of her backpack. Nothing was found. Still not satisfied, VP Kerry Wilson then ordered a female secretary, with the help of the school nurse, to strip-search Savana - without attempting contacting her mother!
The secretary made Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. She then told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area."
Savana also testified that Principal Robert Beeman "did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything." I think that makes it worse! She describes the incident in her affidavit this way:
I was embarrassed and scared, but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry. [It was] the most humiliating experience I have ever had.
Are these "drug warriors," anything more than child molesters in this case? Is this what "zero tolerance" is all about? You know, there's an old saying that should be remembered, especially when surrendering authority to the government:
Be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it!
From my perspective, the school authorities grossly violated Savana and her Fourth Amendment rights, but the courts initially felt differently.
Ruling in favor of the school administration, they claimed the vice principal had "reasonable grounds" to strip-search the 13-year old because school officials have a legitimate interest in protecting students (from prescription drugs). Luckily, a federal appellate court turned the case around, and ruled that the school officials did in fact, violate Savana's Constitutional rights to a reasonable search.
From the ACLU:
"A reasonable school official, seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a thirteen-year-old girl to a traumatic search to ‘protect' her from the danger of Advil," the court wrote in today's opinion. "We reject Safford's effort to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term ‘prescription drugs,' in a knowing effort to shield an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against drugs."
"It does not take a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old girl is an invasion of constitutional rights. More than that: it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity," the court continued.
Right now, the Supreme Court is debating this case. Living in a world as we do now, where teenagers get charged with distributing child porn (sexting), will the court uphold our 4th Amendment rights? Or will our Orwellian government take yet more control?
The Supreme Court has come dangerously close to endorsing such violations before (emphasis added):
In a 1985 decision upholding a high school principal's perusal of a purse belonging to a freshman who was caught smoking in the girls' room (a search that found marijuana as well as cigarettes), the Court said public school officials, as agents of the government, are bound by the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. But given the importance of maintaining order at school, it said, officials do not need a warrant or probable cause to search a student; it's enough that the search is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference."
In subsequent cases, the Court has indicated that a search can be deemed reasonable even when officials have no grounds to suspect a student has done anything wrong. In 1995 it upheld random drug testing of student athletes, and in 2002 it said that requirement could be extended to all students participating in extracurricular activities.
To justify compelling a student to urinate into a cup under a teacher's supervision and surrender the sample for laboratory analysis, the Court not only did not require any evidence that the student was using drugs; it did not require any evidence of a drug problem at the school. The fear of potential drug problem was enough, in its view, since "the nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school."
It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction in support of these searches, after all, "we're protecting the children." But protecting them from what? Advil?
Like everything else government these days, I think it's time we start regulating them! We cannot sit idly by, allowing these violations to happen, while protesting for smaller government at the same time. We must stand-up for what is right.
The naked truth about strip searches in school:
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.
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."
This "War on Drugs" has simply gone too far!
[adsense]
You have to remember how screwed up many people are in the head. This is the country where we strip search 80-year-old ladies at airports but won’t question someone who comes into this country from Iraq is a known associate of terrorists because the ACLU says it violates their rights, despite the fact they are NOT citizens.