A Victory for Basic Human Decency

Thursday's 8-1 Supreme Court ruling in Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, led me to breathe an exasperated sigh of relief. "At least they didn't screw up THIS one!"

On face, the facts of the case were quite stark and seemingly unjustifiable. Then 13-year-old Savana Redding was strip-searched by her school administrators in a desparate search for illegal ibuprofen. While the assistant principal and nurse involved in the search were acting on a "tip" from another student, no drugs were found. A clear-cut example of the administration over-reaching its power in loco parentis.

Yet this particular case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, implying that United States legal system deemed it worthy of debate. It was portrayed as a question of the school's interests in preserving order vs. a student's right to privacy. Regardless of the non-existence of any substantive burden of proof or, for that matter, drugs, this school decided to push ahead with litigation and actually recieved one Justice's "ballot."

When the Supreme Court heard the case in April, the absurdity of the argumentation and the conduct of some of the justices put the outcome of the case into question. Dahlia Lithwick's piece in Slate describes very colorfully the baudy and sophomoric dialogue within the Court's chambers. That Justice Scalia lacked a certain degree of seriousness and respect when he exclaimed "You've searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in her underpants!" or that Justice Bryer seemed to slip into recalling his strange childhood when he stated "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear," made me worry that highest court in the land would not take the humiliation and emotional damage wrought on Ms. Redding seriously.

So I am glad that the majority of the Justices likely looked back at those arguments with some level of disgust.

But the case is a drastic example of a problematic issue within the school system. The sheer irrationality of the administration's actions points to a certain paranoia within modern school administrative circles and even more-so, a fundamental disconnect between administrators and students. As school systems face problems, both in terms of overall success and the high-stakes testing system that they live in, the desire for order and rigidity becomes paramount within the minds of administrators. In order to maximize "efficiency" given limited resources, administrators emphasize discipline and try to eliminate anything that would subvert the "learning environment." It's a legitimate concern, but while the punishment/restriction-centered approach may "crack down" in the short-term, in the long-run, it only alienates an already rebellious and aggravated student body and results in a twisted logic of order uber alles that would justify what happened to Savana Redding. When students already perceive "school" as a distant and inhuman body (even if they may make valuable connections with individual teachers), an aggressive, power-hungry administration only emboldens their resistance.

I recall a few absurd (but never nearly as horrendous as this incident) occasions where my High School's administrators took "drastic" actions to avert what they perceived as "disruptions." When rumor broke out that a water fight was being planned in-between classes, one of our principals chose to ban all water in the hallways. Anyone carrying a bottle would be disciplined and water sales in the cafeteria were halted. For those of us who appreciated being hydrated, it was somewhat of an inconvenience, and the sudden and exorbitant nature of the PA announcement sent waves of bemused laughter throughout the student body. "Water? Really?"

No one in my class had any prior knowledge of any "planned" fight, so we were left wondering how the administration had received the tip. Maybe someone, somewhere was planning something, but reasonable doubt took a backseat to preventing this supposed threat to stability.

A similar (but more expansive) mentality existed within the Savana Redding case. The supposed "tip" that justified (in the administrators' minds) the strip search was fabricated. There was no further evidence against Ms. Redding, but the fear of "DRUGS!!!," the perennial bogeyman of school admins everywhere, led to the horrendously intrusive search. In as sense, this echoed the same logic Dick Cheney articulated in his "One Percent Doctrine" (coined by Ron Suskind in his book). No matter how unlikely the threat is, it must be treated as though it were the end of the world. It is a logic that presumes that the actions taken have no consequences in proportion to the threat perceived, so that anything is justified. Reality be damned.

At the same time, the student is reduced to an amoral figure concerned only with disrupting the functioning of the school through subversion and illicit behavior rather than an actual moral agent capable of understanding right and wrong. This dehumanizing construct only deepens the student-administration conflict. Students are angry with an uncaring, rigid and faceless system that controls their daily lives. Administrators are frustrated with an uncooperative and disruptive student body. As schools shift toward police-state tactics (with dramatic outliers like this case pushing the boundaries of their power over the student body), they over-concentrate on the pursuit of order and lose the fundamental reason for their existence, education.

We do not live in Prussia. Students are people too. Administrators should not attempt to justify total control over their students' lives. That only fuels more non-compliance on the part of a frustrated student body and makes schools appear like work camps rather than centers for free thought and learning. They instead must open up an honest dialogue with students regarding issues of "order" and be open to criticism and complaints about their policies. Education is a cooperative venture, not a one-way flow of information.