Pubdate: Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Source: USA Today (US)
Page: 11A
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: Jonathan Turley
Note: Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law 
at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's board of 
contributors.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Savana+Redding
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)

LOCKDOWN HIGH

Are Zero-Tolerance Policies Turning Schools into Authoritarian 
Fiefdoms? A Case Today Before the Supreme Court Challenges How Far 
Schools Can Go.

In Manassas, Va., a 9-year-old student was suspended for giving a 
friend a Certs breath mint under a policy that not only bans any 
drugs but also anything that looks like a drug. A girl in Oklahoma 
was suspended for bringing a prescription hormone tablet to school to 
deal with her ovarian disease. At least 20 students in four states 
have been suspended for bringing Alka-Seltzer to their schools. Under 
zero-tolerance policies, officials across the country have been 
suspending kids for possession of aspirin, cough medicine and even 
sunscreen. The question is what lessons are being taught to our 
children about basic rights of speech, privacy and due process. Even 
more troubling, what type of citizens are we shaping in this 
increasingly arbitrary and authoritarian atmosphere?

This controversy will be before the U.S. Supreme Court today in the 
case of Savana Redding. Six years ago, Savana was a 13-year-old 
eighth-grader when her friend was found with prescription ibuprofen 
pills. When the friend was searched, teachers at her Arizona school 
also found a day-planner that Redding had loaned her. The friend 
implicated Redding as the source of the ibuprofen. A good student 
without disciplinary problems, Redding was confronted by assistant 
principal Kerry Wilson. She denied any knowledge of the pills but 
agreed to let Wilson search her bag. When no ibuprofen was found, 
Redding was taken to the nurse's office and told to strip down to her 
underwear in front of the school nurse and an administrative 
assistant, both women. She stood in her underwear and bra as the two 
went through her clothes. Finding nothing, they then made the teen 
move her bra and panties, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.

Redding sued. After a lower court found the search to be 
unreasonable, the Supreme Court took up the issue -- the latest in a 
long line of cases that have treated students as little more than 
legal nonentities.

This is a far cry from 1969, when the Supreme Court insisted that 
students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of 
speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Over the next few 
decades, however, a new and more conservative majority chipped away 
at these rights to the point that most are now lost long before 
students even approach the schoolhouse gate. Indeed, the courts have 
allowed students to be punished for speech occurring outside of 
school, including on social networking sites.

The Supreme Court has given shifting and conflicting rationales to 
justify school searches. In 1985, it ruled that students have little 
expectation of privacy in schools -- a self-fulfilling prophecy given 
its failure to protect their rights. Ten years later, in Vernonia 
School District v. Acton, the court allowed random suspicionless drug 
testing of student athletes. But the justices based their decision on 
the school's history of drug problems and the fact that athletes were 
susceptible to a particular danger of injury if using drugs. The 
court insisted that athletes have less expectation of privacy because 
they have to undress in open locker rooms and that forcing teenagers 
to urinate in cups under the supervision of teachers was a 
"negligible" intrusion.

Then, in 2002, the court all but abandoned its earlier logic. Justice 
Clarence Thomas wrote that it did not matter if there was no history 
of drug problems in Tecumseh, Okla., and dismissed the notion that 
athletes warranted different treatment. The court allowed random and 
suspicionless testing of any students in extracurricular activities 
from 4-H to chess club. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, 
mocking the "nightmarish images of out-of-control flatware, livestock 
run amok, and colliding tubas disturbing the peace and quiet of Tecumseh."

In the current case, few people would disagree that the search of 
Redding's backpack was justified. After all, there had been a couple 
of prior incidents involving drugs at the school, and the teachers 
heard that students were planning to take the ibuprofen at lunch as a 
dare. Yet, the quantum leap from a bag search to a strip search shows 
how the court has created virtual feudal estates where students are 
treated as scholastic serfs.

The impact of such a search on a 13-year-old girl being stripped in 
front of teachers is obvious and severe. Ironically, nurses at most 
public schools cannot give a student an aspirin without notifying and 
getting the consent of the parents. Yet, rather than simply hold the 
student for parents or police, the school can force the child to 
strip and expose herself without even notice to the parents.

We need to think seriously about the type of citizens being shaped in 
these authoritarian environments. These kids are learning that they 
must accept arbitrary and often illogical actions by public figures. 
This month in Virginia, an honors high school student was suspended 
and faces expulsion for taking her prescribed birth control pill in 
school. With such cases, the government appears to be training a 
generation of passive citizens ideal for subjugation and control.

In the name of maintaining safe schools, we have created rights-free 
zones that treat free speech and privacy as virtual threats to 
education. When citizens learn rights as mere abstractions, we should 
not be surprised when they treat their obligations as citizens with 
the same disregard. Until rights join writing and arithmetic as 
required components of public education, our schools will remain 
laboratories of authoritarian living.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake