How ironic that, after spending so many years educating our children about the dangers of inappropriate "touching" and sexual abuse, the very administrators who are implementing these awareness programs can also strip search a student? After all, the advice given to students is that, if a situation with an adult/authority figure makes you feel uncomfortable (like being asked to take off your clothes), then something most certainly is inappropriate about it. What happens if the student refuses to comply with the strip search orders? Will the student be forcibly searched? I would be interested to know what advice an attorney would give in this situation--should you comply or resist? What if the student raises the discomfort/impropriety spector? It seems to be acceptable to do a strip search as long as the administrators are of the same sex (and I would assume at least two people present), but I'm surprised administrators would open themselves up to such a situation--after all, a savvy student could claim that perhaps there was a sexual motive behind the strip search order.

I absolutely agree with you. What's next? Cavity searches for kids suspected of carrying Tylenol?

I'm not sure where this quotation is from - I'm quoting a quote on another message board - but this exchange disturbs me greatly:

Adam Wolf, the ACLU lawyer who represents Redding, explains that "the Fourth Amendment does not countenance the rummaging on or around a 13-year-old girl's naked body." Wolf explains that he is arguing for a "two-step framework," wherein schools can use a lower standard to search "backpacks, pencil cases, bookbags" but a higher standard when you "require a 13-year-old girl to take off her pants, her shirt, move around her bra so she reveals her breasts, and the same thing with her underpants to reveal her pelvic area." This leads Justice Stephen Breyer to query whether this is all that different from asking Redding to "change into a swimming suit or your gym clothes," because, "why is this a major thing to say strip down to your underclothes, which children do when they change for gym?"

This leads Ginsburg to sputter—in what I have come to think of as her Lilly Ledbetter voice—"what was done in the case … it wasn't just that they were stripped to their underwear! They were asked to shake their bra out, to stretch the top of their pants and shake that out!" Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.

But Breyer just isn't letting go. "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear."

I know Breyer made a funny mistake in saying "my underwear," but even so, I say we ask Justice Breyer to take off his studly black robe and stand there in his tighty whiteys and wiggle the wasteband around so we can all be assured that he doesn't have a blunt stashed in there... we have probable cause because he MUST be smoking something to come up with this crap.

Quite simply, we do not allow adults to force children to remove their clothing. If this is a necessity - and I have no doubt that in some cases it may be - it should be in the presence of a parent and a same-gendered police officer who has been trained in the legal way to strip search a minor. If they do not have sufficient cause to involve the police, then they do not have sufficient cause to ask a child to disrobe.

And another thing: this is why we need more women on the Supreme Court.

<i> creatrix wrote the following post at 04/23/2009 8:33 AM: And another thing: this is why we need more women on the Supreme Court.</i>

Women performed the strip searches on both the girl in the court case and the writer in this blog, and the Supreme Court backed them up, how would more women on the Court change the outcome?

Fezzik, we need more women on the Court if for no other reason than to explain to the other blockheads that 10-13 year old girls feel differently about parading in their underwear than 10-13 year old boys (based on Justice Breyer, at least).

Fezzik, because, like men, some women are well versed in Constitutional Law and others are not. Presumably, we would appoint women who are to the Supreme court. Most men, however, are not well versed in the development of boundries in pubescent girls. Do you think it is inconsequential that the only person to grasp that it is not appropriate to force a teenaged girl to bare her breasts is the only person on the court who ever was a teenaged girl?

The fact is that girls are taught with much more force about showing their bodies. Ask around. When is the last time anyone you know gave a lecture to their son about showing too much skin? But ask about their daughters.... Girls have a very different set of standards, primarily because girls are much more sexualized in our society.

I'd also like to see more women on the Supreme Court, but neither of these two responses answers my point, that the strip searches in question were performed by women. If simply being a woman were enough to object to these searches, why did none of those women prevent

The Republican majority on the Supreme Court doesn't think much of anyone's bodily dignity. The same justices quoted here were the ones who joked about torture as being similar to college hazing. It's a party-line issue rather than a gender one.

Girls have a very different set of standards, primarily because girls are much more sexualized in our society.

There are double standards when it comes to sexuality, but I think you're painting the other side of the fence as much too green. Boys are taught early on that their sexuality is dirty, harmful and all but criminal.

I think you're missing the point that I was making - perhaps I didn't make it clearly enough. The men on the Supreme court seem to think that getting into your underwear isn't a big deal. Clearly, they need to understand the female perspective. There was Ginsburg stuttering around trying to explain that the boundaries set for and by pubescent girls is very different from those set for and by pubescent boys, and the men didn't seem to understand. I'm basing on the transcripts.

Boys' demonized sexuality notwithstanding, most men don't grasp what it means to bear one's breast. If a boy is made to bare his breasts, it's not considered sexual, but for a girl, it is. The men on the Supreme court are obviously not sexualizing this 13 year old girl, which is, of course, normal, but their job is to protect children from predators and giving adults the right to strip a child without their parents present is not protecting the child.

The humiliation issue is really a non-issue. Strip searches are humiliating. The question is: do we want to give school administrators carte blanche to make our children disrobe

Another point, Fezzik, is that I was not saying that women simply know this is wrong. For heaven's sake - look at the Sandra Cantu murder. Women do bad things, too. My point is that the court seems desperately out of touch with the boundaries needed to keep young women and girls in the safest position possible, and those men don't seem to understand the impropriety here. They are comparing how they felt at 13 with how girls feel at 13, and although it is an unfair generalization to suggest all feelings are gender-related, our genders certainly have influence. This is about what is and is not a violation, and things that make a girl feel violated (like the baring of her breasts) are very different in some instances from what makes boys feel violated, and it seems to me that the Justices simply didn't comprehend that.

I think you're missing the point I'm making as well. The women who performed these strip searches did know what it was like to be a 13-year old girl and did them anyway. Not only that, they directly decided that they would do them, making up their own rules, and without precedent.

That a group of conservative men later declared that those women did the correct thing has very little bearing on the gender of the conservatives, and much more to do with their politics.

I find it difficult to believe that a Supreme Court justice of either gender would have a better understanding of body image, issues and boundries in teenagers than a practicing teacher or school nurse would.

And I think you are missing the moral certitude that most school officials (in my experience, anyhow) have when dealing with students. They feel that they are in charge and know best, and it is kinda like the army or something, where unquestioning obedience is demanded, so they feel in control. (I still remember a HS teacher i know launching into a long impassioned rant about a student wearing a cap in the hallway. I couldnt understand what the big deal was, and she said, "They can hide their faces under the brim and get away with stuff b/c we cant see who it was."

To me, it is all part-and-parcel of 'zero-tolerance' and the typical knee-jerk reactions that school ppl have toward things, esp if it seems to undermine their authority. The ones I have been involved with tend to treat parents pretty much the same way--we are the experts, you are just a layperson, we know what is best, and you should just support us unconditionally.

Of course, this may all be linked to conservatism--most school teachers and officals I have known, as well as most nurses, tend to be very traditional/conservative. The point to me isnt that 'women decided and did this,' but rather, did they exceed their authority and just plain common respect for another person? I havent really found too many teachers or school officials who are too likely to be reflective about such things, as in, "What if this were me?" One reason I guess they dont, is that they, of course, would have never broken a rule, so they wouldnt have been in this situation, and anyone who is, deserves to be treated as if they have no rights or human dignity.

The more telling thing to me is, how did the community react? I would guess this perhaps went before the school baord. I am pretty sure that the board would have supported the school officials, but how did the public feel about this? We know how her mom felt, and how lots of other women feel about it. Just b/c the ppl who committed this act were women, doesnt automatically make them right, as having CIA/military members conduct torture b/c they are in charge makes that right, either.

So i really dont see this so much as a gender issue at the level of the act, but more of a personality/school culture phenomenun. The consertative angle may play in there too, as I mentioned above, tho, as schools tend to be very rigid, traditional places.

Wow, read my first reply, not sure my point came across too well, so here it is:

Based on my experience, you give teachers and school officials *way* too much credit for empathy!

Fezzik, perhaps if you imagined the tables turned? What if we were dealing with a group of 11 women and one man, all of the women saying "well, I don't see what the big deal bout being kicked in the groin is. Sure, it's painful, and we don't really want it to happen, but what's the big deal?

I think we could agree that such a group of women are a bunch of morons. Now we have a lone male voice in the mix saying "well, it's a bit more than just painful."

We can probably agree that the guy has a point, right? But lets say the 11 women then go on to completely ignore the perspective of the only person in the discussion who actually has male genetalia.

Basically that's what happened. Breyer & company aren't clear on what the big deal about bared breasts is, Ginsburg countered them, and they ignored her opinion.

My objection is that the entire experience of being female rests on the shoulders of one woman. Any case that reaches the Supreme Court that may affect women has only one person to put the female experience into the spotlight. It's very easy to write off a single person's opinion, especially when it's something that you really simply cannot understand.

Caerole, I have to disagree on one point: I find most educators to be quite liberal.

That said, I do think that there is a certain type of authoritarian administrator for whom the power trip is just a part of the daily routine.

Also, there *are* children who will hold the law over their heads and try to manipulate authority figures with threats and false accusations. There are also parents who will simply not even entertain the possibility that their child would have any sort of contraband.

If we had a clear law delineating what is and is not permissable and under which circumstances, it would go a long way, but that law needs to regocnize that being forced to strip is, in fact, a violation, and unless (I repeat) the school is confident enough in their suspicions to contact proper law enforcement authorities, then they should have no right to strip a student.

I am glad you find them that way, esp if you have a kid (or kids) who doesnt fit the ideal!

It just hasnt been *my* experience in the least, not when it came to school issues (cant address their politics as much as their actions and attitudes that I have encounted, and the few i have had contact with in a non-school seeting have all been pretty uptight to me...)

and yes, some kids will definitely play both sides, depending on which best serves their immediate purpose! i have plenty of first-hand experience with *that* too, lol ;)