Forgive the lack of posting. I’m in a bad funk right now. And any semblance of rational posting is almost impossible when all I want to do is scream and pull my hair out. And of course a couple of articles in this morning’s paper did not help my pitiful mood one iota. In fact these articles are the straws that broke the camel’s back and pushed me over the edge.
So what made me spit a very good gulp of coffee across the table and cause my hand to involuntarily fly to my mouth to stifle a blood-curdling scream?
Well the first offending article (and probably the worst) was about a Safford Middle School vice principal who ordered the strip search of a 13-year-old eighth-grade girl who was also an honor student based solely on the word of another student that she was passing out prescription-strength Ibuprofen pills:
The school has a zero-tolerance policy toward prescription drugs on campus.
Redding denied providing the pills to a classmate and was escorted by a female administrative assistant to the nurse's office. She and the nurse, also female, ordered her to strip to her underwear, move her bra to the side and pull her underwear out, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.
No pills were found.
Now I do not know this little girl or her family, but I can tell you this, if that had been my daughter, there would have been blood spilled --- and it would NOT have contained any Seething Family DNA.
In what damn universe did these idiots think this was an appropriate response to the problem? Zero Tolerance does not mean these idiots have carte blanche to do whatever they want to a 13 year old girl. My God, I am completely dumbfounded at the total inability of these people to see that there is no one-size-fits-all policy for every problem that arises. It is like these people have completely lost all common sense or ability to think without some kind of “in ten words or less, black and white rule”.
I give this little girl and her family a lot of credit. I feel an amazing sense of violation for them. I cannot imagine the strength it took to take this through the court system and relive it each time that little girl was forced to re-tell her story, but I am grateful they did. And I admire the fact that they didn’t do what I know I would have done if someone had violated my daughter that way.
My God, have we become that stupid a society that we think we can have black and white policies that are going to neatly address what are mostly gray issues that confront us in daily life? This is so indicative of the way we as a society seem to approach problem-solving these days and it simply does not work.
That strip-search would have destroyed my daughter when she was 13. In fact that strip-search would destroy my daughter now and she is 20. These school officials should be counting their blessings that it wasn’t my daughter that they did this to. Taking this through the courts to get justice would not even have occurred to me. In fact I shudder to think what I would have done because spending years in the court system to get justice would not have cut it. Oh, and just for the record:
… judges said officials violated Savana Redding's Fourth Amendment right “to be free from unreasonable search and seizure” and called the search in 2003 “grossly intrusive.”
“Grossly intrusive”? No f*cking kidding!
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