Alright so the House of Representatives has just passed a bill (it's now moving onto senate) called "The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2005" which gives teachers the right to perform warrantless strip searches with only the smallest suspicion that just one student brought drugs to school. The searches could take the form of pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how administrators interpret the law. The bill will become mandatory for all schools with federal funding.

What do you think about this? Is it violating our rights or is it worth giving that up for protection?

You can find the article here

Oh, wow.
That's like in violation of the Constitution!
It's even worse than the Halloween searches they had for my middle school.

Why should they do this anyways? They could spend that money on new text books or something!

In theory it's to keep "their children safe" from drugs. Notice how only 3 or 4 people in congress have children in public schools.

Yeah.
It's more focused on the illegal drugs part rather than the safety of kids.
But this might protect kids from becoming drug dealers. I still doubt the usefulness of this bill.

So you're saying random, warrantless search and seizure would be ok because it's meant to protect us from drugs? Even though it's a direct violation of Amendment Four of the US Constitution?

I'm not saying that it's ok.
I'm just saying that it might protect kids from becoming drug dealers and joining gangs and stuff like that. But I'm just thinking about both sides of the arguement right now..

It wouldn't really protect us from much because not many students are drug dealers.. I don't really get the point of this bill, actually.

How exactly would it protect us though? Even if they did deal drugs at school, what kind of idiot would carry the drugs on them? So this bill would in fact be doing nothing but allowing teachers to conduct random strip searches.

I'd be surprised, very surprised (and angry) if it makes it out of Congress.

... ^ to the person above me. Kids don't have to deal, they can be users and still have drugs on them. Just fyi.

Edit... I meant to address SOCK.

It would protect us because like..
Ok. Lets say person 1 is a drug dealer and person 2 is a person who buys drugs from him.
Person 1 sells drugs to him everyday and one day he has no more. Person 2 gets angry and beats him up.

Doesn't make much sense, but The Chumscrubber (the movie) would make a better example..


To get the drugs into school, you need to carry them with you first. And kids usually know when you have drugs and if you leave them in your locker or something, they might go steal it.
And besides, cops are allowed to go through a student's locker with out a warrant, right?

So what you're saying is that it's protecting the people who buy and sell the drugs? Isn't that the exact opposite of the bill's purpose?

Maybe it would protect everyone.
The dealers from getting beat up or even killed and the people who buy drugs from abusing the substance.

What is the bill's purpose anyways? Who does it really protect?

That's exactly my point. It doesn't protect anyone. According to the bill it protects students, but in reality (as I stated above) it's just giving teachers the right to perform random strip searches without warrants.

WTF. where's our privacy and respect?

Strip Search Bill? Ewww, Who wants to see Bill Clinton naked?

I agree. How about if the teacher was really perverted and just wanted to feel you up? The teacher could use this stupid bill as an excuse.

Why not just get drug sniffing dogs?

Yeah, but I think they're pretty expensive. I'm not sure, but it IS better than being physically felt up and searched by someone.

Or called a police.

Do the police have things to detect drugs? Other than dogs, I mean.

They could issue a warrant for a strip search. The issue here isn't the possibility of a search, it's that fact that it is going to be allowed without a warrant.

Even with a warrant, I would like parents to be notified as well. If possible, a parent should be present while this strip search is taking place. Otherwise, if a child is innocent, he/she could be traumatized.

I dont think so



If they detect drugs, they're basically detecting papers, water, and plants.

Err. What do you mean by that?

The dogs or.. ?


If you're talking about the dogs here, they are trained to sniff out scents and decect explosives and things like that.

Not dogs ;]

Ok..
Then what do you mean?

That makes a lot of sense

If a police invented a drug monitor, it's actually scanning for paper, plants, and water.

papers/plants = cigg
water = beer, alcohol, and etc

so yeah, i think inventing a drug monitor is complicated.

Drugs are made out of base materials that we use for school. (paper and water)

What about crystal meth, cocaine, and angel dust?

How would they be able to detect those with something that only scans paper, plants, and water?

Pretty much the only ways to do that right now is with trained dogs or searches.

Yep. Animals are sentitive.

cocaine would fall under plants.

i dont know anything about dust and crystal meh.