Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Mark, TX on July 20, 2008:

Exactly right, Boris. Starting with zero tolerance about sexually mistreating a child!!! "Oh, you stripped her? Nuh nuh nuh, I don't want to hear any thing about drugs or reasons or extenuating circumstances -- off to the sex offender registry with you!"

These administrators seem like the typical pissant bully who exploits the slightest modicum of power they might receive. You know the type -- give them a clipboard or a whistle and it goes straight to their heads, throwing their weight around in ridiculous ways just because they think they can.

The thing that frightens me is that they indeed can! I am frightened at what is happening to the American spirit. Instead of being taught to be independent, free, and self-sufficient, our children are being taught to collapse and submit in the face of even the faintest perceived authority, no matter how ridiculously and outrageously applied. No resistance, no objection, not even any sense of self-preservation.

This is not to criticize the victim in this or any other case, but rather to express my concern over the system and what fundamental principles the system is striving to instill in our children. I fear a future society in which the masses have been trained to abdicate all power to an elite few who are themselves effectively exempt from the law.

This last part is particularly poignant: all too frequently it seems that the people who most eagerly enforce Zero Tolerance (ie, embrace Zero Thought) turn out to be the biggest hypocrites of the first order. In short, they abuse their power precisely *because* they narcissistically view themselves as special and unique, above the very rules they so enjoy applying to everybody else.

For the poster who criticized the Constitution, I urge you to read the document if you have not done so, as I believe you will find that it is this very Zero Tolerance-type situation that its framers feared most. The Constitution stands for individuality, personal responsibility, and inherent skepticism of power. That theme runs strongly throughout. In my opinion most "problems" with the Constitution have nothing to do with the Constitution itself but rather the deliberate and concerted effort distort and parse words to make it seem as though it says things it doesn't. As indicated by another poster, the text itself is crystal clear, and it is only through extreme contortions of language and common sense that inconvenient statements in the supreme law of the land can be "interpreted" so as to be circumvented. Nevertheless, despite efforts to manipulate it remains the main obstacle to the Zero Tolerance totalitarian mindset. It is for this reason that many in America fear any major tweaking or especially revocation of this document. It's not that anybody believes that the document is perfect, but rather that we fear that the same people who are pushing Zero Tolerance and all the other such associated nonsense will be the ones doing the rewriting -- and this fear is true on both sides of the political aisle, since politicians, judges, administrators, etc. on both sides are guilty of these kinds of abuses of power for the good of all "the little people".

Posted by Scuzz-Canada, Eh? on July 21, 2008:

Seems to me that kids need to learn not only to say NO to drugs, but to say a very loud and heartfelt NO to stupid rules and the administrators of such.

She would have been much better off to put up a fight.
She was neither arrested, nor was there a search warrant presented.

This was in no way a legal proceeding.

These people seem to think that just because a child is in "their" building, that they can do anything they want.

Posted by Peter - England on July 21, 2008:

Had this happened in the UK, under our Law the people ordering and those carrying out the strip search would have been immediately arrested and held in prison pending trial for child molestation.

On the evidence given by the child Savannah, all of the teachers involved would have been imprisoned by the Criminal Court; they would have been dismissed from their jobs, and they would have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register for the rest of their lives, and would have to report to the authorities every time they moved house, and would not have been allowed anywhere near children in the future.

In some cases, this last restriction has meant that, if they live near a school, they would have been forced to sell their house and move to somewhere that was NOT near a school.

They could also have been sued in the Civil Court for Damages.

I love all things American, and think that it is a great country, but unfortunately, some of the people in charge are complete morons.

As you now have approval to carry arms in all states, I damn well know what I would be doing if these paedophiles had ordered my 13 year old daughter to strip.

Posted by Scott, in Killeen, TX on July 21, 2008:

Randy, you wrote: "... WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN ...".

People who want to write should use letter and paper; any fool can write email, and many do; it's called spam, and politicians are likely to pay as much attention as you hopefully do. Anyone on the planet can send email, and they have no way of knowing who sent it. Their duty is to their own constituents. With "snail" mail, they can see where it came from, and they can see that someone went to a bit of effort to send it, as opposed to the almost non-existent effort that it takes to send an email. Ditto for form letters; spend some effort to make your letter(s) unique.

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Very good points all. -rc

Posted by Nick, Washington State on July 23, 2008:

After reading the article and all of the comments, it seems to me that what is ultimately lacking in the school systems is any form of oversight on behalf of the students and parents. When a criminal is arrested, the police are REQUIRED to advise the suspect that he does not need to say anything, and may consult an attorney, even if that means the court has to provide an attorney. However, when Savana is being stripped by school officials, who is there to look out for her rights, if the school won't?

It's sad to have to resort to this, but I propose a new position within the school districts: Student Advocate. This position should be paid from the district's budget (they are, after all doing part of the school's job for them), but should be an elected official who reports and answers to the parents/voters via school board, PTA, etc., and who can not be fired without legal proceedings. Unlike a traditional school board member, this position would be a full time position charged with auditing all disciplinary actions issued by the schools; ensuring compliance with the SPIRIT of school policies (thus providing checks and balances for overzealous ZT practitioners); and perhaps most importantly, being on call to respond immediately if a student facing severe discipline (long suspension/expulsion) or questionable action (like Savana) requests consultation with an advocate.

One might say that this is the parents' job, but the advocate would have a few advantages: 1) Unfortunately, there will always be cases where even the best parent may be unreachable; 2) The student may prefer not to have their parents directly involved in some cases; and 3) The school can't ignore the advocate like they may attempt to do with parents. In fact, if the school cannot reach an agreement with the advocate, prompt, impartial arbitration should be mandated. And if the school attempts to circumvent the advocate in any way, not only would they have violated the law, but they give the parents an extreme bit of leverage in civil proceedings.

Perhaps, hopefully, with this type of oversight, schools would be forced to ask themselves, "Would the advocate buy this?" And over time, they might cease to expel students who forgot to remove the Tylenol or Swiss Army knife from their bag on Monday morning, and stick to punishments that actually fit the crime.

Posted by John, Michigan on July 24, 2008:

Savannah seems to be doing okay (okay, as much as you can tell from her 8 seconds in the clip below). The school superintendent is still a chowderhead, saying the same things as five years ago.

Posted by Mia, Victoria, BC, Canada on July 26, 2008:

I would like to add something that has not been directly noted in the article or the comments to date, though there have been hints of it.

The school officials said that the strip search was necessary because Savana (Savannah? I see both spellings here) had prescription drugs that she might hypothetically be giving to other students. The implication is that it is more necessary to protect children against prescription than OTC drugs. Yet drugs are presumably prescribed because they are needed.

Several other commenters have made the point that without their asthma rescue inhalers, severely asthmatic children may die; that's the obvious example. Another example, of course, is antibiotics; if they're not taken at reasonably regular intervals, they may not work, and the bacteria could develop a resistance to them. Even painkillers such as ibuprofen, the drug in question here, may make the difference between being able to function in school and being incapacitated.

It's not life-threatening to be without a painkiller, no, but wait till you have a migraine or severe menstrual cramps or -- as Randy and one commenter mentioned -- growing pains before you condemn them as unnecessary. I have to say I am very tempted to resent anyone who has been so lucky as to not have frequent severe pain and therefore blithely boasts of never taking drugs. But then, I'm not one of those lucky ones.

At 55, I would likely endure a strip-search now with no emotional scarring whatsoever. No, I wouldn't appreciate it and I don't want one, but I'd probably be okay. But when I was 13? Unlikely. What a way to start a girl's adolescence.

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The correct spelling of her name is Savana -- I typo'd it when I put it in the title, and it'd take some programming to make the URL work if I changed it, and I haven't gotten to that yet. Just too much to do right now...! -rc

Posted by Beamer, Toronto on July 26, 2008:

What I don't get is that a school employee of any kind can strip search anyone ever. Does this mean I can strip search a person who comes to my house if I "believe" they have something unlawful on them?? I was brought up to believe that we had rules about such things and that if you see a crime or suspect a wrong that there were folks you could call for that.

I wonder what happened to the "snitches"? I'm thinking they should be next in line for civil action, as they started this train rolling.

If a school believes an "evil-doer" is attempting entrance, they can repel them. Searching back packs etc is a sad fact these days but searching down to the skin? OY!

That said, I'm kind of glad they Didn't call the cops as that may have been worse for the girl. (You have done stories where the cops acted a bit extremely.)

Posted by Bronwyn, Norfolk, VA on July 26, 2008:

I had Advil confiscated from me once a couple of years ago -- a travel-sized tube that had only held ten pills when it was full, five or six of which I had taken already -- because I had forgotten to remove it from my purse after a class trip to France. The security guard was quite condescending about it, but at least I wasn't forced to strip to prove I wasn't smuggling something like Motrin or Midol too. Then again, I weigh over two hundred pounds; doubtless there was the clear implication that nobody wants to see that.

But at the same time...as a matter of fact, it may have been during that same search, or maybe it was just the same room (the security guards always seemed to do "random" searches while my class was in that particular classroom). One of the guards found a bottle of prescription pills and loudly demanded, "Whose pills are these?" He asked the question five or six times as we tried to tell him, then finally heard us when we told him the name of the student who owned them. (The student in question was out of the room, supposedly using the bathroom.) The guard said, "Oh, okay," put the pills back on the desk, and moved on to the next student. We griped about that for a while.

I hope she wins her court case. I'll have to start following it...

Posted by Pierre, Canada on July 26, 2008:

It seems to be, that we have gone overboard on this drug thing....

Perhaps, if people are stupid enough to take drugs for recreation, as opposed to taking prescriptions for a needed condition.... Then we should just ignore them, and let then take the drugs. In fact, let them take as much as they want, and as quickly as they want. Keep it simple: just give the stuff to them.

It is likely they come from the shallow end of the gene pool, anyway. Yes, they may harm or kill themselves. But the time, effort, resources, money, etc that we are spending to protect these ingrates could be put to better uses. I resent paying high taxes, and seeing them spent uselessly and ineffectively, to "protect people from themselves"...

The law does a better job of protecting the vandals who broke into my car, looking for, I presume, money, to buy drugs, than it does in being of any use to me. Sad.

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I discussed this point in my blog in "War on Drugs". -rc