Pubdate: Thu, 16 Apr 2009
Source: USA Today (US)
Page: 1A, Front Page
Copyright: 2009 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Savana+Redding
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/strip+searches

STRIP SEARCHES AT SCHOOL: DISCIPLINE GONE TOO FAR?

Court Case Tests Limits of Anti-Drug Programs

SAFFORD, Ariz. -- Eighth-grader Savana Redding was scared and 
confused when an assistant principal searching for drugs ordered her 
out of math class, searched her backpack and then instructed an 
administrative aide and school nurse to conduct a strip search.

"I went into the nurse's office and kept following what they asked me 
to do," Savana, now 19, recalls of the incident six years ago that 
she says still leaves her shaken and humiliated. "I thought, 'What 
could I be in trouble for?'"

That morning, another student had been caught with 
prescription-strength ibuprofen and had told the assistant principal, 
Kerry Wilson, that she'd gotten the pills from Savana. The nurse and 
administrative assistant, both women, were alone with Savana in the 
nurse's office when they asked the girl to take off her shoes and 
socks, then her shirt and pants. The two women then asked Savana to 
pull open her bra and panties so they could see whether she was 
hiding any pills. None was found.

Drug searches, along with drug tests for students in athletics and 
other extracurricular activities, have become common in schools 
across the nation, but the search of Savana at Safford Middle School 
on Oct. 8, 2003, ignited a legal dispute that has landed before the 
U.S. Supreme Court -- and could transform the landscape of drug 
searches in public schools.

On Tuesday, the nine justices will hear Safford officials' appeal of 
a lower court's decision that said the administrators violated 
Savana's constitutional rights and should be held financially responsible.

Attorneys for the Safford school district, about 80 miles east of 
Tucson in the Pinaleno Mountains, portray the school as "on the front 
lines of a decades-long war against drug abuse among students" and 
defend the search of Savana as necessary.

They echo the concerns of administrator groups nationwide who say 
increasingly younger students are experimenting with drugs and are 
abusing prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

They cite a 2006 Office of National Drug Control Policy report that 
said more than 2.1 million teens abused prescription drugs in 2005 
and that youths ages 12-17 abused prescription drugs more than any 
other illicit drug except marijuana.

If the Supreme Court upholds the search, it will give administrators 
broad discretion on drug searches across the board.

"If they decide that this was justified, then anything goes," says 
Sarah Redfield, a Franklin Pierce Law Center professor who follows 
court rulings on student searches.

Calling the ibuprofen a "relatively harmless medication," Redfield 
says that "this was not a search for a weapon or potential threat. If 
they do say you can do this one, I can't imagine what search won't be allowed."

Yet, if the court strikes it down and also holds school 
administrators financially responsible, as Savana Redding and her 
mother want, the decision could produce a new wariness among administrators.

Francisco Negron, general counsel of the National School Boards 
Association, which is siding with the Safford officials, says if the 
high court holds district officials liable it will restrain 
administrators who need flexibility to deal with problems.

"I don't think it (a strip search) is the preferred method," Negron 
says, "but it may be in certain circumstances."

The case, coming to the justices a day after the 10-year anniversary 
of the Columbine school shootings, occurs in a broader context of 
schools trying to balance student freedom with discipline. In some 
cases, administrators are resorting to "zero-tolerance" rules that 
impose strict punishments for a variety of transgressions.

"After Columbine, schools became more rigid," Redfield says. "But we 
did have some backlash against zero-tolerance policies, and there are 
now less absolute policies in schools."

The next phase of student searches and discipline could depend in 
part on how the court rules in Safford Unified School District v. Redding.

In 1985, the Supreme Court for the first time specifically applied 
the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches to 
students, in a case involving a New Jersey freshman whose purse was 
searched after she was caught smoking in a bathroom.

The justices upheld the search, yet emphasized that students have 
legitimate expectations of privacy and judges should balance schools' 
interest in enforcing rules to protect all students with individual 
students' privacy rights.

Since then, the court has heard few challenges to student searches. 
Cases that have come before the justices during the past two decades 
have involved general random searches for drugs, not situations in 
which individuals were targeted.

In 1995 and 2002 rulings, the Supreme Court upheld drug testing of 
urine -- considered a type of "search" -- for students involved in 
athletics and other extracurricular activities.

In those cases, the justices in the majority emphasized the 
importance of deterring student drug use.

Safford officials take that tack in their arguments against April 
Redding, who sued on behalf of her daughter.

In Savana's case, officials say, they were aware of problems with 
drinking and drug abuse at the middle school and had a tip that 
Savana might have unauthorized prescription drugs.

Phoenix lawyer Matthew Wright -- who represents the school district 
and Wilson along with school nurse Peggy Schwallier and 
administrative assistant Helen Romero -- said in his legal brief that 
administrators were suspicious of Savana Redding from the start of 
the school year because they detected the smell of alcohol around a 
small group of students that Savana was among at a school dance.

Savana's mother contends the school is saying such things to try to 
justify the strip search. She notes that her daughter was an honor 
student who was never disciplined.

Wright counters in his brief that "her assertion should not be 
misread to infer that (Savana) never broke school rules, only that 
she was never caught."

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 6-to-5 
against the Safford officials, it expressed skepticism about the 
student tip that Savana had pills and said, "At minimum, Assistant 
Principal Wilson should have conducted additional investigation to 
corroborate (the) 'tip' before directing Savana into the nurse's 
office for disrobing."

Wright declined requests for interviews with school officials. In an 
e-mail to USA TODAY, he wrote: "In our estimation, much of the public 
discussion of and reflexive reaction to the case has stemmed from a 
superficial understanding of the facts."

In arguing for wide latitude for administrators to conduct drug 
searches, Wright told the justices in court briefs that schools need 
"flexibility to respond swiftly ... to protect students and maintain 
order. Rarely will that flexibility be needed more than when school 
officials confront the threat of drug abuse."

The U.S. Justice Department, charting a middle course, says in a 
court brief that the search of Savana did not satisfy the standards 
of the high court's 1985 ruling because Wilson and the other school 
officials lacked "reasonable suspicion" that any pills would be 
hidden in the girl's underwear or on her body.

Yet, the department also says school officials should not be held 
financially responsible because it was not clear the search was 
unconstitutional. Separately, Justice Department lawyers endorse the 
school officials' concern about students possessing pills, saying, 
"Many illegal drugs, such as Ecstasy, come in pill form, and it is 
often difficult to distinguish those pills from legitimate medication."

The National School Boards Association and the American Association 
of School Administrators side with Safford officials, noting that 
recent reports, including from the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy, highlight an "alarming trend with respect to prescription and 
(over-the-counter) drug abuse -- precisely the kind of trend to which 
educators are highly attuned."

They say the 1985 case of New Jersey v. T.L.O. failed to set a clear 
standard for what steps school officials may take when searching for drugs.

"Now more than ever," they add, "schools are in the forefront of 
addressing dangers to our youth, including their growing abuse of 
prescription drugs."

Among those sympathetic to Savana Redding's point of view is Kris 
Krane, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a 
group that advocates a more moderate approach to drug searches and penalties.

"We think the school went way beyond what it needed to do for what 
was at issue: ibuprofen," Krane says. "We can only imagine what it 
would do for an illegal drug such as marijuana."

Krane insists that intrusive searches are counterproductive to 
administrators' goals, especially with students who might be seeking 
someone to talk to about possible drug abuse. "They need to be able 
to go to someone in authority, but zero-tolerance policies don't 
foster trust," Krane says. "The intentions may be well and good, but 
they are dangerous policies."

The National Association of Social Workers -- joined by the National 
Education Association, the National Association of School 
Psychologists, the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and the 
American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children -- sides with 
April Redding in a court filing. "Social science research 
demonstrates that strip searches can traumatize children and 
adolescents and result in serious emotional damage," they say, citing 
studies in educational and legal journals.

Carolyn Polowy, lawyer for the social workers association, says in an 
interview that adolescents -- typically shy and awkward about how 
they look -- are particularly sensitive to being forced to expose their bodies.

"We're sympathetic with the schools, but a strip search is sort of 
the capital punishment of searches," Polowy says. "It should be rare, 
if at all."

Redding's lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union, 
emphasizes the trauma to a teenage girl told to take off her clothes at school.

"A child's 'private parts' are not subject to observation by school 
officials without significant justification," Wolf says in his filing 
to the justices. Wolf says in an interview that none of the 
information school officials had should have led them to think Savana 
was hiding pills in her underwear.

During an interview in the small home she shares with her mother, an 
aunt and her aunt's family, Savana says she was especially shy about 
her body because she is overweight. As a middle-schooler, she said, 
she never wore tank tops or shorts.

Now that her case has become so public, she has heard from hundreds 
of people, mostly students expressing support, many writing research 
papers on school searches. She is taking some classes at a community 
college and trying her hand at creative writing. After the strip 
search, Savana never returned to Safford Middle School. She 
transferred to other schools but never obtained her high school degree.

She hopes to pass a GED test and become a counselor.

As for the search in the nurse's office, she often wonders whether 
she should have protested rather than follow the school officials' orders.

Says Savana: "I think about it every day."

[sidebar, Page 2A]

CHALLENGES TO SCHOOL POLICIES

Key Supreme Court rulings involving searches and drugs in schools:

New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985): The justices uphold school officials' 
search of a high school freshman's purse after she was found smoking 
in a restroom, and they establish that public-school searches are 
covered by the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable 
searches and seizures.

Vernonia Independent School District 47J v. Acton (1995): The court 
rejects a Fourth Amendment challenge in an Oregon case and lets 
public schools require students to take drug tests as a condition of 
playing sports.

Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 v. Earls 
(2002): The court allows public schools in an Oklahoma case to impose 
random drug tests on students who participate in any extracurricular 
school activity.

Morse v. Frederick (2007): The justices reject a First Amendment 
free-speech challenge and allow a school district to suspend a 
student who unfurled a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a parade route in Alaska.

Authorities argued that the message referred to marijuana and 
conflicted with their anti-drug policy. Lawyers for the school 
district in the new case from Safford, Ariz., point to the Morse 
ruling to support arguments about the need to deter drug use. 
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