Wednesday, April 22, 2009

They Seek Power, Not Drugs by Andy K.

When Savana Redding was 13 years old, the principal at her junior
high school subjected her to a humiliating strip search to determine
whether or not she had smuggled ibuprofen onto school grounds. The
strip search was fruitless: no ibuprofen was found. Savana sued
the school district and, after 7 years of lawsuits and appeals, her
case was heard before the US Supreme Court yesterday.

The case has been widely covered in the media, but there's a detail
mentioned on page 42 of the Supreme Court transcript which hasn't
received much attention: the school officials never searched her
locker or her desk.

This detail completely undermines the school's argument. Shouldn't
her locker have been the FIRST place they searched? The assistant
principal had received a tip from another student that Savana was in
possession of ibuprofen, but the school district's lawyers admitted to
the Supreme Court justices that this other student had never specified
that the pills were hidden in Savana's undergarments. So the
principal had no reason to immediately make a beeline for Savana's
breasts.

And if the scourge of ibuprofen is serious enough to justify a strip
search, why isn't a locker search also necessary?

These school administrators aren't serious. They're perverts.

No comments: