Video: When is it constitutionally permissible to strip search a child?
Backstory:
In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn’t know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse’s supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl’s mother.
So when the talking heads in the video refer to “prescription” medications, they’re referring to two non-prescription medications: ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve), both of which you’ll find on the shelf at Walgreens. And even these pills Savana did not have.
The superintendent claims that, in addition to ferreting out over-the-counter remedies, strip searches of children are justified by the need to keep guns out of school. But that’s true only if he expected to find a Glock in the folds of the labia.