13 y.o. Girl Strip-Searched at School-Supreme Court Hears Case-What do YOU think?

Is anyone else enraged by this scenario? A thirteen year old girl was STRIP-SEARCHED by school officials because they "suspected" she MAY have had prescription strength IBUPROFEN!

This is a MAJOR WTF??!! I am so angry that this girl was put through such a humiliating, traumatizing experience.

These are times when I am reminded of what I dislike the most about public or government education-it is SO INSTITUTIONALIZED! And becoming more so with each passing day. These are schools which children attend, not prisons! Though schools continue to resemble prisons more and more. This case is highly disturbing to me and I hope it is to others.

Savana Redding, now 19, was a 13- year- old eighth grader in a small Arizona public school when she was called into the principal’s office and was asked to dump out her backpack. She did. Finding nothing, this male vice principal then sent Savana to the nurse’s office, where she was told to remove her clothing. She was then told to shake out her bra, thus exposing her breasts. Then to spread her legs while she held open her panties, exposing her pelvic area. This strip search was not to find heroin, cocaine, or even marijuana. There was no “probable cause.” The ONLY information the school officials were going on was another student claiming that Savana had given her ibuprofen.

Note: the principal did not even check Savana's desk or search her locker. After the backpack search turned up nothing, they went directly to a strip-search. WTF??? Where was the common-sense or any logic here, not to mention care for the emotional well-being and rights of this young girl? If this had been one of my daughters I do not know if that principal would be have been so lucky as to only be sued. I don't think he'd be sleeping so well at night.

Where in the hell is any common sense in this scenario? This was a young girl, an honors student, who had no disciplinary record whatsoever. And what were they looking for? IBUPROFEN!!!! And what was their cause for suspicion? Evidence that she was distributing or selling drugs? NO. Many students saying that she was? NO. Did Savana appear to be high on medications or illegal drugs? NO. This is what they had-ONE other girl telling them that maybe Savana had some ibuprofen with her.

Really, what in the world were these officials thinking? I suspect there was some political drama and/or middle school bitchiness going on because these facts just do not add up to justify the actions on the part of the school. Shame on that principal. And really, shame on the school nurse and the secretary who conducted the search. They were women. One was a school nurse. She, if not both of them, should have been aware of the emotional effects such an experience would have on a 13 year old girl in the midst of puberty-the age at which you are the MOST insecure about your body, the most embarrassed, the most emotional. And shame on these women for not speaking up for this child's rights, for not standing up to the principal and refusing to conduct such an unwarranted, obviously ridiculous search. Seriously, did they really think that if Savana had ibuprofen, she would have hidden it in her crotch?

This case concerns me on so many levels. What are the rights, if any, of a child, a human being, once they walk into a public school building? Do they lose all constitutional rights? Who decides what is a “reasonable search?” Who decides what is "cause for suspicion?” How common are strip searches in schools? Is this going on all over the country to our children? Is this what the war on drugs and zero tolerance and fear of being sued has come to? All the possible answers to these questions frighten me, both as a parent, and as a citizen.

The case, Safford Unified School District v. April Redding 08-479 was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court last week on Aril 21st.

To add insult to injury, several of the male justices on the Supreme Court seemed to view Ms. Redding's humiliating strip search as just a little “embarrassing,” not too much more than changing in front of other girls in the locker room. Justice Stephen Breyer even joked about how when he was a boy changing in the locker room, it was not uncommon for other kids to stick things down his underwear. When the court exploded with laughter, it was he who was embarrassed.

I was ANGRY all over again: here were these old MEN, minimizing Savana's experience that caused her, a girl whose favorite place was school, to stay home for months, eventually switching schools, never to return to the school where she experienced such shame, and to develop ulcers. Is THAT the result of just a "little embarrassment?"

It makes me so angry that these old privileged men were so cavalier in discussing a young small-town girl’s traumatizing experience, reducing it down to nothing more than a typical change of clothing in the locker room. How dare they? They have no idea what they are talking about! Are they female? Have they ever lived in a pubescent female’s body? Have they experienced the shame of not having a body that meets up to our society’s unattainable airbrushed image? Have they ever been forced to undress and show their penis to authority figures, authority figures they would then have to face every day they went to work? I suspect the answer to that is NO!

There was one exception, the lone female in this powerful group of nine- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She, upon listening to this belittling attitude from her male colleagues, was clearly frustrated when she spoke up for Savana- and thus all teenage girls- when she reminded the jerks on the bench that teenage girls don't ENJOY getting naked in front of their peers, that they often would find it embarrassing at that age, and they don’t get completely naked.

That gave me just a tiny sense of satisfaction and just a tiny glimmer of hope.

The school of course is defending what it did by claiming they had to keep other students safe. That if they did not perform the search, they would have been endangering the lives of the other students. I understand the need to keep kids safe at schools-it is a valid concern. However, were the other children’s lives in danger even if Savana had ibuprofen? I do not think so. I think the school had several reasonable alternatives. If they really thought Savana had ibuprofen on her, why not call her mother and send her home? Why not search her desk and locker?

As a parent, at the very least, I would want a phone call that my child was suspected of carrying "illegal drugs." I damn sure would want a phone call BEFORE my child was strip-searched. In addition, you can be damn sure I would take my child out of that school before I let strangers make her get naked and shake out her bra, spread her legs, and show them her genitalia.

I am deeply concerned the Supreme Court may rule in a way that makes it even easier for schools to perform strip searches, but I hope to hell they do not.

Until June…

Suburban Zen?

Question of the morning: Is it possible to enjoy a walk in the suburbs on a weekday morning during peak school and work departures?

I awoke around six a.m., my hubby headed out for his first day of what is hopefully a new exercise/stress-reducing program: going for a bike ride. My goal was to shower and be ready when he returned so that I could begin my new (or renewed) routine of walking our dogs in the morning, sans children.


While I was showering, I began to think about the timing of my walk: it would be between seven and eight a.m.: PEAK school bus pick-up time for neighborhood children. I had forgotten about this. My walks of late with my dogs have generally been late afternoon or evening-sunset is my favorite time. There are two lakes I pass on my favored dog-walking "loop." The second lake is perfect for sunset: pink and purple skies glow above, while their reflections glimmer in the lake. I walk very slowly during this portion, breathing in the air, gazing at the sky, absorbing as much nature and meditation as is humanly possible while others pass by on bicycles, walk by with their dogs, or sit and talk on benches.


So, the question I posed to myself this morning was, "How do I take the dogs for a walk during peak school bus and work commute and still enjoy it?" (This would be my only window of opportunity before Rich left for work-I didn't want to leave the girls home alone and I wanted to go alone). I recalled walks in the past during this time of morning that just totally killed the Zen quality of my exercise and nature fix. I don't know-something about huge yellow LOUD school buses plus LOUD school children waiting to board them plus accompanying chatting parents at bus stops equals meditative buzz kill.



What to do? Even though I don't have a child that attends public school, I am fully aware of the schedule (hard to miss when the bus stop is just outside your bedroom), not to mention I used to have a child who rode said noisy buses. I knew that the first bus would pick up the elementary kids at approximately 7:15 and the next one would be at about 8:00 for the middle and high-schoolers . I had a 45 minute window. However, I thought of another glitch: those times were just for my neighborhood. There would be buses all along my planned "loop!" Aargh!

How could I experience morning bliss through all this? Here is what I did: I waited until the first school bus had picked up its victims, uh, I mean students, and then I cut over to the park across the street. Instead of just walking through it to the next neighborhood, I stayed there, taking my dogs around the first lake. At first, they pulled me in our usual direction, but with a little tugging on my part, I convinced them of the different route. As we headed around the lake, I recalled how two Springs ago, Lauren and I had discovered a nest there-a goose nest. It was rather large-about 2 feet. We began taking daily walks to check on the progress-first the female sitting on said nest for several days, then sure enough, one day, when she was scared off as we walked by, she left her nest, which surprised me, and we saw several large goose eggs. There is a reason why, when a child is hit on the head with a baseball, mothers remark, "Oh, my you're going to have a goose egg there!) Because goose eggs are BIG! Well, a lot bigger than the robin's tiny blue eggs we'd seen and certainly larger than the chicken eggs we ate. Eventually we got to see little baby geese! Soooo cute!

I have to confess I was hoping for some great nature discovery or experience today. Some sighting of a rare bird, a turtle sunning on a rock-anything. (I am currently reading E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan to Lauren.-no writer describes nature more eloquently than White does). Sam has discovered the trumpeter swan nest and has just watched the babies swim over to him. Louis, who cannot "beep" at him, pulled his shoestring. So I am living with E.B. White's fantastic imagery and story telling of nature in my head, totally spoiling me for the suburbia in which I live.


We passed a section, which, until today had been blockaded with a pile of stumps that had made a crude wall, blocking a view of a "private" lake at the opposite end of my street. Though I felt a bit like a peeping Tom, I enjoyed the view of this lake I hadn't seen in years! It was huge! It wrapped around this one person’s property on the one side, stretched down along several houses, ending at a house and neighborhood I do not know. It was not particularly beautiful, but I enjoyed the "private" viewing. Molly and Baxter did too. I thought, "Ok, I guess that is my discovery for the day, like Sam’s discovery of the swan's nest." Hardly life changing, but I was content with this experience-I take my nature fixes where and when I can get them.



After this little detour, we continued our circle around the lake. So far I had not heard a school bus, nor seen a human being. So far, so good. As we passed by the entrance to some woods, I thought of how I would like to take the dogs in there, but memories of paintballs and paint spray kept me away. After circling the lake once, I thought I might walk a bit through the neighborhood near this park, but the sight of a man dragging out his trash can inspired me to turn around and make a second circle around the same lake. Off I dragged my again confused dogs back around the lake.



I resigned myself to a repeat of the walk around the lake, but this time in reverse, looking forward to another view of the now "unhidden" third lake, hoping no human would come along and take away my fantasy of being alone near the wilderness. Alas, no such luck. A few short steps into the return trip, I spotted a person and a dog. Damn. As we each neared each other, I saw it was a new neighbor, an Asian woman, whose English seems a bit shaky. She does not say much, but she is friendly. She has a beautiful Akita puppy -all white, soft fur, full of energy, looking like he should be pulling a sled in the snow of Alaska, not walking here on the flat grassy land near a lake on a warm, sunny spring day in Virginia. We had a friendly exchange (well, mostly our dogs did) and I forgot to stop by the "new" lake. However, just as I passed it, thinking I'd missed my moment of Zen before returning home to the drudgery of my daily routine -saying good bye to my hubby, feeding the kids, doing the dishes, teaching the kids, driving to co-op, teaching more kids, etc., I turned around and saw a mother duck and her six little ducklings.

There: my moment of Zen in suburbia during peak morning rush hour. One friendly person, one furry dog, six little ducklings and NO noisy school busses!

The answer to my question of the morning: YES!!!