Linkfest: Two "School as Prison" Anecdotes
Students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” Except when they do…
ITEM: When science class becomes “forensic science” class —
A science teacher at Comstock Middle School [in Dallas] is accused of trying to use a little bit of science to track down her missing belongings.
“She said some of the students took her cell phone and credit cards but she didn’t know who it was. She told us she was going to fingerprint us,” said student Savannah Seal.
Savannah says the entire 7th grade class was told to fill out background check forms with their names, addresses and parent information.
Then the teacher went around with an ink pad and had students fingerprint the bottom of the form.
MY TAKE: The teacher, who was not identified in the news account, was “administratively disciplined” according to school officials (whatever that means). In any event, putting aside the legal questions (i.e., Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations, tortious battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, etc.), we also see here some great civics lesson added to this science class’ curriculum: you are guilty until proven innocent, anyone in authority can do anything they want to you, privacy does not exist, and so on. (Via Fark.)
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ITEM: What’s the going rate on a student’s dignity these days? Apparently forty dollars —
Monroe [Michigan] police are investigating the alleged strip search of three seventh grade female students at Trinity Lutheran School by a female teacher looking for missing cash.
“It doesn’t seem appropriate, let’s put it that way,” Monroe Deputy Police Chief Thomas Moore told the [Detroit] Free Press today[.] But our county prosecutor will decide if anything illegal occurred.”
The three girls were allegedly strip-searched last Wednesday. A parent of one of the children then complained, within a day of the incident, Moore said.
…
Moore said between $30 and $40 had gone missing from a class where the girls were present.
MY TAKE: You can write your own commentary about the deputy chief’s sloppy shorthand statement that the prosecutor (as opposed to a jury) will decide whether anything illegal occurred. One would also hope that the previously cited “administrative discipline” might be in the cards, along with civil lawsuits, if the incident occurred as the three girls insist it did.
Meanwhile, even adults in a criminal setting have a higher expectation of privacy where a strip search is proposed. As a circuit court recently held in another student strip search case:
The feelings of humiliation and degradation associated with forcibly exposing one’s nude body to strangers for visual inspection is beyond dispute. As the Tenth Circuit has explained, the experience of disrobing and exposing one’s self for visual inspection by a stranger clothed with the uniform and authority of the state … can only be seen as thoroughly degrading and frightening.
–Redding v. Safford Unified School District #1, No. 05-15759 (9th Cir., July 11, 2008) (PDF – 75 pages) (internal citations and quotations omitted) (background here).
And if there is one power imbalance greater than a suspect facing “a stranger clothed with the uniform and authority of the state,” it’s a school-aged child facing her teacher.
Filed under: Fourth Amendment, Law Enforcement Abuses, Student Rights