Monday, July 14, 2008

Sheer Craziness!

By now you all should have heard the story about the 13-year-old girl who was stripped searched for "drugs"/prescription Ibuprofen. It resulted from another girl telling school officials that the girl in question had "drugs".

I am absolutely horrified to read that school officials are strip searching students as part of their "zero tolerance" policies. This just gives me the creeps. If I had children in school, I would certainly use this opportunity to tell them that if any school official orders them to remove their clothes, they should refuse and insist on their parent(s) being called to come to the school and to do it loudly.

Since when have schools moved beyond educating to humiliating police tactics? I was asking myself this and I started googling information on the story. I ran across a story stating that in September of 2006 the house passed a bill allowing schools to do strip searches or risk losing federal funds. What the?!*
I tried to see if I could pull up more stories and determine what happened in the Senate. I can only assume that the Senate had members with more intelligence and common sense and that the bill failed, however, I couldn't find anything about this being the case so I am not sure what happened to the bill.

Does anyone else see the monumental issues with having a policy like this? In the first place as in the Arizona case it was a matter of one girl lying about another and no substantive facts. Secondly what in the world warrants a strip search for drugs? It seems like there are a lot of other options available for determining if a student is in possession of drugs in a school. Thirdly what damage does this inflict emotionally on the student who had to undergo this chilling experience and how does she assimilate back in with the rest of her peers at the school after such an event? We all know the mentality of kids in middle school!!!

This whole thing is just so wrong is oh so many ways! Mom

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