Published by Linda on 24 Jul 2008 at 06:25 pm

This Advil Is Just A Nickel

9 Comments General Matters

9 Responses to “This Advil Is Just A Nickel”

1. Barbra on 24 Jul 2008 at 8:18 pm #

   What about the first two times it was tried? How did Savana’s family lose those? It seems to defy reason.

2. JennB on 24 Jul 2008 at 8:22 pm #

   At the very least, shouldn’t they have been required to wait for a guardian to be present (or at least informed) before the strip search was performed? The poor girl is 13 freaking years old. And the whole thing was basically based on a game of telephone – she said that she said that she got it from someone.

3. Linda on 24 Jul 2008 at 9:06 pm #

   Basically, the two times that the family lost, the judges were like, “They had a tip, and drugs are REALLY bad.”

   Seriously, there’s not some secret justification for it that’s hiding in the story somewhere. About the worst thing that they actually had on Savana before this happened was that a few weeks earlier, this same kid, Jordan, had told the principal that Savana served alcohol before a dance one time. (It doesn’t appear that she or her parents had ever been told about or confronted with this accusation or given any opportunity to respond to it.)

   It really did amount to, basically, “Pill! Pill! Pill at school! Pill!” It’s drug hysteria.

   The question you ask about having a guardian present is one of many that I asked (internally) as well. They had a million options, and one of the reasons I think this case is so important is that I think you have to remind public schools that the fact that you deal with kids doesn’t mean you can immediately jump to the path of least resistance. You still have to keep in mind that you are the government and they are citizens, and they have some freedoms and some privacy that you can’t throw away simply because it’s easiest and fastest and most convenient for you. I think it’s very important, despite the leeway that you have to give schools, that they lose these extreme cases just so that they continue to at least DO THE MATH of figuring out, “Is this okay to do? Is this respectful of a student’s constitutional rights?” You don’t want them to basically feel confident telling students, “Look, officially, you have rights, but unofficially, we know that they’re not enforced.”

4. golfnutbucket on 25 Jul 2008 at 9:27 am #

   STRIP SEARCHED??!! FOR ADVIL??!! I’m glad I have dogs and not children in today’s world.

5. Sharon on 25 Jul 2008 at 11:05 am #

   I used to work as a paralegal to a criminal defense attorney who often represented juveniles. When parents came in complaining of how their children were being treated by school officials, he often told them the following: “Inmates in prisons have more rights than kids have in schools.” And as to the parents being notified – in the cases we had, the parents were never called until AFTER the lockers had been searched, the children had been questioned, etc.

6. Sharon on 25 Jul 2008 at 11:38 am #

   Oh, holy crap. The school would have ended up suing ME if they ever strip searched one of my kids because I would have LOST MY EVER-LOVIN’ MIND and heaven only knows what I would have done next. I totally get the “drugs are really bad” concept – but to strip search a 13 year old? For ADVIL?? Someone’s brain was absent that day, I fear.

7. Linda on 25 Jul 2008 at 12:54 pm #

   Yeah, one of my friends who’s really not very much a suing type said to me that he would easily, happily, readily sue the crap out of a school that put his kid through a strip search in this kind of situation.

   That’s kind of what attracted me to the case in the first place, as a topic — it’s so OBVIOUS that this is an insane thing for the school to have done, and yet they did it. Assistant principal ordered it; his secretary and the school nurse — the school nurse! — carried it out. Not one of those three adults had the sense to stop that from happening, and it took three tries in court to get the right answer, even though I have yet to talk to anyone who reads the case who isn’t sort of horrified. That’s why I wondered…how would you get to that point? How do you get to a point where people are doing something that’s obviously wrong, and so many eyeballs can miss it? Sometimes, it’s like people become so attuned to the finest points of exactly what’s legal and exactly what’s not and exactly where the fine lines are that they stop stepping back and saying, “Of course, all of these rules go out the window if you’re stupid enough to strip-search somebody’s kid to find ibuprofen without any decent evidence.” It’s a forest/trees problem, partially, where there’s a terrible loss of perspective because people are overwhelmed with fine points.

8. Steven on 26 Jul 2008 at 1:18 pm #

   This is just horrible. I can’t even imagine this happening when I was in school, and I feel so horrible for the girl and her family.

   There are two parts that has not been touched upon at least for me is this:

   1. Even assuming that the advil was found on her body after the strip search (i.e. she was guilty), that a strip search was even considered as lawful or justified is …. I can’t even find the words.

   As well, the fact that 3 adults did this horrifies me as well.

   I truly hope this assistant principal gets fired, and is banned from every being in the school system again, but I doubt that would happen. A punishment for the people who went along with it wouldn’t be far off either.

   Even if it were real hard drugs, I don’t think a stripsearch would be justified without the parents present, and law enforcement present as well.

   2. The second part that horrifies me is how often this goes on, and/or is accepted as a valid tool for school officials to use? How often is a stripsearch conducted on children, and how minor an offense does it have to be before they can’t use it?

9. liz on 28 Jul 2008 at 3:27 pm #

   Gah, this is awful. Zero-tolerance is one of the stupidest things ever created. I mean, you don’t leave any room for kids being stupid & making mistakes, and oh hey, here’s a CRAZY idea, maybe LEARN from their mistakes. God, in high school, I kept a big bottle of aspirin & a couple other ‘drugs’ in my locker. And sometimes I would give them to my friends. And we turned out alright.

   The other part that bugs is that they took the word of this other girl, and ran with it. I mean, she’s the one who had the ibuprofen in her pocket, of course she’s going to try to get out of it. (Not that I think she was necessarily premeditating it, but you know you’re that age, you go ‘oh crap’ & try to think of some way to get out of it.) And the whole “She gave us alcohol before a dance. Oh, but it was awhile ago, so you can’t prove or disprove it” “evidence” is absolutely horrifying. If I ever have kids, I’ll tell them if they try to strip search you, you sit right down & say ‘as soon as my mom or dad gets here’ & refuse to budge. Agh.

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