Congress Considering Strip Searching Students: Safety Act (HR 5295)

[Jcrowley]

Congress Considering Strip Searching Students
September 18, 2006


Imagine an America in which school officials could strip search every student in their school based on the unsubstantiated tip that one of them might have a joint.  Congress is voting on a bill Tuesday or Wednesday that could make these police state tactics more common.

We can stop Congress in its tracks, though. Call your representative RIGHT NOW and tell them to vote against this dangerous bill. 

If you don't know who your House representative is, simply call the Capitol Switchboard at [phone] and give them your address. They'll connect you directly with your representative's office. When you get a staffer on the phone, politely say something like:
"My name is and I live in . I'm calling to urge to vote against the Student and Teacher Safety Act (HR 5295) when it comes to the floor this week. This bill would allow schools and police to invasively search large groups of innocent students based on the mere suspicion that just one of them has drugs. It strips Americans of their 4th Amendment rights. Please let me know how votes."

MORE INFORMATION

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) is a sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding (essentially every public school) to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, for essentially any reason they want. All they would have to do is say they suspect one of their students might be carrying drugs, and then they could conduct a wide scale search of every student in the building. These searches could be pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how far school administrators wanted to go. Although courts would have the power to overturn policies that went "too far", it could take years - possibly decades - to safeguard the rights of students in every school.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/091806stripsearch.cfm

[tk2kewl]

1. Not fer nothin but I'm not smoking anything that came outta my butt

[DRoseDARs]

2. Not like it violates the 4th amendment or anything...

Bloody hell, didn't we just go over this? No warrant, no search, no exceptions. Sheesh. :eyes:

[donco6]

3. While I suppose there are teachers somewhere . . .

. . . who think this is a good idea, I can't think of any. We have strict rules governing searches of any kind. In 10 years here, I can't think of once where we've EVER done a strip search. I don't think I've ever even heard of a pat down search being done by school personnel (maybe SRO police at some point, but even that's iffy). This runs straight into the 4th Amendment and is probably unconstitutional. I doubt any district worth its salt would change anything based on this law. Not only is it too risky from a liability standpoint, it's just stupid. We are not DEA agents, nor do we want to be.

[dapper]

5. I heard John Mark Carr is for it.

It could have just been a nasty rumor though... :evilgrin:

Dap

[Jcrowley]

6. I can think of two schools

that I went to and they would respond very differently. The first would've definitely welcomde and exploited this if it existed. We had three principals that literally walked around the school grounds with sharp looking hats and trench coats. These were power hungry control freaks. Fortunately we moved and this second high school would've never consider such an option if it existed. The climate of this country is normalizing stuff like this in such a manner that even debates on these topics enter into Orwellian mode.

[TrogL]

11. WTF is a "sharp looking hat"?

[Jcrowley]

12. Similar to this

Going for the mob look as school principal was pretty weird.

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. Low Men in Yellow Coats n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

4. I'll bet a hunnert bucks this goes nowhere.

[Joanne98]

7. This is something CHILD MOLESTERS would do!

[mom cat]

16. This law would permit perps to have a field day!

[elehhhhna]

8. These f-wits are goin for the gold before they're tossed out, aren't they?

[Ezlivin]

9. Home Schooled students are also subject to the law

Just kidding.

It is very interesting to live under our new Nazi masters.

I hope that our detention center is nice.

[Sapere aude]

10. What does possession have to do with safety? Most stoners are passive

aren't they?

Call our Homeland Security! Strip the students! We are in danger! Someone has a joint up their kazoo!

[OneBlueSky]

13. do you HAVE to be a moron to serve in Congress? . . .

or is it optional? . . .

[DemoTex]

14. It helps ...

Assholity helps too.

[Jcrowley]

17. Goose Creek

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/07/national/main582492.shtml

[dkofos]

18. Glad my kids are out of school

I would have to tell them to quit school if this happens.

Blatantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL

[sweetheart]

19. Next thing, congress will insist on fucking every high school student

The republicans are not getting laid enough, so the rider on this new resolution is
permitting republicans to visit and rape any high school student they desire as long
as they plant drugs on them and brutally beat them so they know what happens from drugs.

The republicans kill and eat children for barBQ, just as long as they're born and fattened
fairly, all republican children are bread to be fucked and eaten.

[KingFlorez]

20. Great, give perverts an opportunity to violate kids

Stupid, stupid idea that provides an opening for sick people to come in and abuse the law for their own purposes.

[Blackhatjack]

21. Imagine a level of idiocy, add 10%, and you have this Congress...

...I don't know why members of Congress don't try out these great ideas on themselves before subjecting the rest of us to them.

Let's have random strip searches of Congressmen.
Let's have Congressmen subjected to non-lethal microwave weapons.
Let's have Congressmen breath dirty air that comes from non-regulated pollutors.
Let's have Congressmen held in custody w/o charges, no lawyer, no tel calls, and subjected
to 'waterboarding" daily for a couple of weeks.

I bet we would get a different kind of legislation coming out of Congress.

[DaveJ]

22. My daughter's 7th grade class was searched

Not stripped searched but everyone had to put their hands against the wall and submit to a body search when an illegal drug was found on one other student in the class.

So we are not really that far from this already.

What bothers me is the incredibly tight control people are under from one moment to the next. It's difficult to really pinpoint it but our personal rights and freedoms are continually chipped in ways that go unnoticed.