Should schools be permitted to strip search students?

Remember what it was like to be 13? Awkward. Gawky. Embarrassed by your changing body. Worried about social pressure, fitting in, and being bullied by "mean girls."

Now imagine being strip searched in front of adults who are practically strangers. At school.

The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a public school in Arizona violated the privacy rights of one of its students in 2003, when officials forced her to undergo a strip search after accusing her of bringing over-the-counter medication to school.

Savana Redding was 13 at the time, an honors student who had never been in trouble. According to Reuters, the assistant principal ordered a school nurse to search her after another student said Redding had provided her with over-the-counter ibuprofen pills. (Yes, like Advil or Motrin.) Though the tips was unverified, and no pills were found in Redding's backpack or pockets, the 8th grader was made to remove her clothes, move her bra to the side and pull her underwear out, exposing her breasts and pelvic area to adults, to see if she was hiding any ibuprofen pills. No pills were found.
 
I understand the need to protect students, to ensure their health and safety, to eliminate the possiblity of drug abuse. But where do you draw the line?

The school's policy prohibits the use, possession or sale of any drug on school grounds, including prescription and over-the-counter medications. A week before the search, a student became sick after taking pills from a classmate and said certain students were bringing drugs to school. Which makes their reaction toward Redding and the possibility that she had smuggled in some ibuprofen a bit easier to understand, if not accept.

At the time, it probably looked as if the school officials were well within their rights to search Redding's belongings, if not her body. A 1985 Supreme Court decision that dealt with searching a student's purse has found that school officials need only reasonable suspicions, not probable cause. The court also warned against a search that is "excessively intrusive," though it did not specifically refer to strip searches.

Redding told the Associated Press that she was pleased with the Supreme Court's ruling. "I'm pretty excited about it, because that's what I wanted," she said. "I wanted to keep it from happening to anybody else."

The court ruled that Safford Unified School District officials would not be held financially liable for the situation. Justice Clarence Thomas, the only dissenter in the 8-to-1 vote, pointed out that the majority's decision could result in more cases of kids smuggling drugs into the classroom. "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," he said. "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."

Parents, what do you think? Should schools be allowed to strip search students for any reason? Why not call the police if an invasive search is really warranted?

Lylah M. Alphonse writes about juggling career and parenthood at The 36-Hour Day and Work It, Mom!, and blogs at Write. Edit. Repeat.