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Originally Posted by Marvelous Marv
It must be a pretty clear-cut case when I agree with shakran
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Take deep breaths and try to relax. I'm sure it won't happen again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frosstbyte
My post was a general->specific construction. I don't think there's any problem with searching backpacks and lockers at school-hence, broad constitutional question. If you notice, I agree that they screwed up by strip searching her, because they weren't going to find anything that posed any immediate risk.
My problems with this case are the incredibly extreme damages the girl is claiming and how you go about drawing the legal line between the general notion that students shouldn't have a reasonable expectation about privacy in school and what that allows school administrators to do.
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I don't find them to be extreme damages. As Snowy pointed out, we are talking about teenaged girls here. Girls that age tend to get traumatized by what we might see as relatively minor events. And I doubt any of us would consider it a minor event if we were made to strip off in front of someone - imagine how the girl, who is much more sensitive to traumatic events than we are, and who may as many girls that age do have body image issues, must have felt with 2 adults who are supposed to be on the team keeping her safe, force her to strip and ogle her while she does it.
I wouldn't call it rape either, and I wouldn't call it sexual assault, because there doesn't seem to have been a sexually-motivated aspect to the situation, but I would certainly call it criminal.
I'll point out that we live in a climate now where if a kid is doing poorly in a class all she has to do is claim the teacher touched her breast to get rid of him for the rest of the semester while the school investigates him and drags his name through the mud. We live in a climate now where teachers are afraid to hug their students for fear of being slammed with sexual assault, and yet here a principal and two staff members collaborate in forcing a girl to strip? Not only is that mind-bogglingly stupid from a self preservation point of view (and I really don't want mind-bogglingly stupid people in charge of my kid's education, thank you), but it points an interesting finger at society, which thinks it's horrible to hug a kid, but seems to be divided on whether or not it's OK to force a child to disrobe in front of staff.