05-31-2009, 11:08 PM | #1 | |
Ferbawlz!
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 665
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Update On School Strip-Searching
Here is the original thread.
And here are some new articles that came up in the past two months. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html http://www.thehilltoponline.com/girl...week-1.1723400 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us....html?_r=1&hpw some snippets: Quote:
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05-31-2009, 11:33 PM | #2 | |
Evil Makes Me Smile
Join Date: Dec 2003
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Question: Was Scalia being sarcastic? I can't tell. If he's being serious, that man....*ugh* I don't think he is, by how I'm reading that last article
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Lets parse this. 4th Amendment: Unreasonable search = bad. Does one student saying to a teacher, "I got the pills from X!" in order to avoid punishment constitute right to search? My guess is that courts would say yes, regardless of whether the source is reliable. Next question. You're going on a somewhat iffy tip on a student distribution some kind of pill. You search backpack/purse/pockets. I think we can all agree those are legally permitted, and even if we can't, the Supreme Court says it is, and so it must be. No pills turned up yet. The question you'd have to weigh as a justice of the SCOTUS is this: At what point are you allowed to do a more intrusive search? Never? Only with a search warrant? With a 'reasonable' amount of suspicion? What constitutes reasonable? |
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05-31-2009, 11:45 PM | #3 | |
Blue Psychic, Programmer
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There is no question in my mind that body cavity searches should be off-limits. That's just plain humiliating and unnecessary. At the very least, a warrant should be obtained and the parents should be not only informed, but given a chance to come over.
It really pisses me off that schools have become police, judge, jury, and executioner these days. I personally went to a school district that abused the hell out of it. Frankly, the place should really be shut down for all the crap they do. The worst part is that this wasn't even over hard drugs. It was over ibuprophen, which is about as good at being dangerous to our youth as kids' vitamins, or less so, since the overdose rating is, I assume, lower than iron-related deaths. There was no reason the school should have had nearly that much leeway, and I sincerely hope the Court agrees with me and takes remedial action.
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06-01-2009, 10:50 AM | #4 |
Evil Makes Me Smile
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The way I'm reading the article is that they didn't know that they were ibuprofen, and that recently a kid had gotten sick off of some pills he took that he was given at school.
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06-01-2009, 12:46 PM | #5 | ||
Blue Psychic, Programmer
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The same applies to things like rescue inhalers for asthmatics, insulin and testing devices for diabetics, cough drops, aspirin, and everything short of Tic-Tacs.
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06-01-2009, 04:42 PM | #6 |
Napoleon Impersonator
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All of which is just incredibly messed up.
The most extreme my school got was banning outside drinks for fear of smuggling in alcohol... but most of the teachers thought it was stupid and didn't even enforce it. |
06-01-2009, 05:04 PM | #7 |
HATE YOU SO MUCH!!!!
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The high-school I went to did not allow us to have ibuprofen, etc, but they did allow things like rescue inhalers and epi-pens. Blue, I am surprised that your school was allowed/is allowed to get away with that, as without those it is not unreasonable to believe that a student could be put in a life-threatening situation, or even die.
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06-01-2009, 05:08 PM | #8 |
Evil Makes Me Smile
Join Date: Dec 2003
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My school didn't allow us to have ibuprofen or anything else. Even teachers thought it was stupid and you could pretty much get away with anything as long as you could show it was innocuous or you had a prescription. Or if you were known as a good student like I was (I once got yelled at for antibiotics, and I pretty much just ignored the person).
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06-01-2009, 05:12 PM | #9 |
Master of War
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It's my opinion that allowing schools that much leeway is dangerous for larger reasons than just the emotional well-being of the nation's children. The way I see it, the courts' constant upholding of a school's "right" to interfere in the privacy of its students, which is something I feel only a parent should be allowed to do, (or perhaps a school, with a parent's case-by-case consent) and allowing them to otherwise rule over students completely, is indicative of a growing attitude within not just the schools and judicial system, but government in general, that any authority should be absolute authority. What's worse, whether by accident, coincidence, or intention, enforcing these unreasonable systems on these students in their formative years primes them to accept the idea later in life that they have to both literally and figuratively bend over, and take it.
Even people who like big government tend to agree, by and large, that there needs to be some limitation on government power. This attitude that schools have absolute authority over their students is anathema to the concept of limited government. A student literally has no rights at all in a modern school. I have NEVER seen a school handbook with a section detailing what authority figures within that school could NOT do to a student. However, there is a gracious plenty about what a student may not do, usually with the accepted implication that a failure to explicitly list any given activity as something that may be done means that it automatically belongs among the "may nots", even if it is not listed there. Acclimating children to the idea that they absolutely must bend to the will of an authority figure in all circumstances, even if that authority figure is wrong, is dangerous to a free society. In this particular example, every student at that school is suffering an erosion of his or her consciousness of the idea that they have a right to resist unreasonable search and seizure and/or invasion of privacy. I'm not advocating giving kids the right to refuse a reasonable search. Reasonable searches are just as important to the health and safety of free people as is the right to refuse unreasonable ones. If a kid smells like pot or crack, or is acting high, then by all means, he should be searched. Furthermore, in my opinion, every school that doesn't have a metal detector and at least two armed guards at every entrance should be shut down, but that's a different topic.
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If you're strong, I look strong. If you're weak, I look weak. Last edited by Spekkio; 06-01-2009 at 05:14 PM. |
06-01-2009, 05:26 PM | #10 | ||
Blue Psychic, Programmer
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I've known or met several people who were falsely expelled, had their lockers cleaned out under school authority and got their stuff stolen by the people doing it, and other things of illegal nature. I have never heard of any school getting away with what they do, but they're an incredibly powerful enemy. I was lucky to be a good student, which was a ticket onto their good side, which gave me a lot of leeway.
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