I just shake my head in sadness, disgust, and amazement when I read stories like
this:
A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal's office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana...
While the three classmates watched, D.H.'s pockets and book bag were searched but didn't find anything, the lawsuit said. One of the students told school officials he had lied about D.H. having drugs, but administrators continued the search as D.H. begged to be taken to the bathroom for more privacy, according to the lawsuit.
D.H. was ordered to strip and again, no drugs were found...
The student's attorney, Gerry Weber, said a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found school officials can't perform even a partial strip search of a student, even if they have probable cause.
Here's an appropriate section of California education code:
49050. No school employee shall conduct a search that involves:
(a) Conducting a body cavity search of a pupil manually or with an instrument.
(b) Removing or arranging any or all of the clothing of a pupil to permit a visual inspection of the underclothing, breast, buttocks, or genitalia of the pupil.
As I wrote in a recent post:
It's probably a bad idea, but sometimes I think that school and university administrators should be held personally liable when they so blatantly disregard the rights of students. Might that put a damper on these little martinets?
It is probably a good idea for personal liability to attach....school personnel are so isolated from reality by their union protections that the probability of any effective discipline in this cast are somewhere between zero and none.
ReplyDeleteGiven the recent southern California case where molestation has been going on for (apparently) years, and this, it's time to put some fear in the individuals. No one else other than government operatives have this kind of protection, and it needs to end.
"...held personally liable"
ReplyDeleteYep!
If I read this correctly he was made to strip search in front of the three other students. If I did anything like that with a juvenile (or an adult suspect for that matter) I would be looking at some serious time off (unpaid).
ReplyDeleteThat principal is supposed to be the adult supervision and he authorized this. He needs some time off (unpaid) to get his mind right, aka head out of his ass!
This War on Drugs needs to stop pronto. Look at Portugal, drugs have been decriminalized (though not fully legalized) there for a decade, and they have not descended into chaos. I wish I heard more rhetoric about ending the drug war from the small-government personal liberty types. This should not be an exclusively leftist cause. It sucks that the only Republican in Congress willing to go against the drug war is Ron Paul. His crazy ideas on bringing back the gold standard and his opinion that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should never have been passed are of course horrible ideas, but his good ideas are ones that we need to hear more of.
ReplyDelete