Pretending to be civilized in an epidemic of institutional sadism

[kpete]

Pretending to be civilized in an epidemic of institutional sadism
By PIERRE TRISTAM
ESSAYS

From the you-can't-be-serious department: Savana Redding was a 13-year-old honors student at a small Arizona middle school. In math class one morning the principal ordered her to pack up and follow him to his office. The principal interrogated her about a planner Savana had lent a friend, and a few ibuprofin pills sitting on the principal's desk, which were found in the planner. Savana knew nothing about the pills.

The principal then ordered her to the nurse's office for a strip search. Over ibuprofin pills. Not that it would make a difference if she were carrying crack. She was 13. She was being ordered to strip. Her parents were never notified. Savana did not consent to the search but complied in humiliating details. She was forced, literally, to shake her bra and her underwear, exposing herself in front of the nurse and an assistant. Nothing was found. I don't know what's more perverse: The principal's zero-tolerance stupidity over ibuprofin pills, the degrading search, or the fact that nine U.S. Supreme Court justices will hear this case next month to decide what limits, if any, there should be on school authority.

But this isn't authority. It's criminal abuse -- of authority, of the child, of human dignity. How do we come to this? Stupid question, considering the accumulating record of a society where ideals of justice and humaneness mix with the basest controls in the name of discipline and order. They're close relatives, those school officials who order a 13 year old strip searched, to those who have children Tasered, or to police officers who now use that instrument of torture as a routine means of subjugation, or to prison guards who do the same with restraining chairs. When the barbaric becomes routine, it's called protocol. What should be denounced and forbidden is accepted and debated.

The distance has vanished from there to a government so willing to torture, and a public so willing to implicitly accept that dissolution of principles, if it's willing to debate it. "Why can't we send them to be tortured?" George W. Bush had wondered about terrorism suspects in the early days of his war, according to a new book by Patrick Tyler, The New York Times' chief diplomatic correspondent. "Stick something up their ass!" Bush got his wish in the by-now familiar litany of terrorist behavior in the name of fighting terrorism -- torture and rendition, secret prisons, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the systematic policy of brutality approved from the top that muscled up the wars' enforcers.

more at:
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Columnists/Essays/colESSAY032909.htm

[PDJane]

1. If this were my child,

There would have been a brouhaha of massive proportions over this kind of abuse. And this is abuse.

America is no longer a civilized country. It has joined the list of countries that elicit startled looks when you say you are going to visit the place.

The overreach of the police and military has become so endemic that the Bush Cabal got away with the torture memos and the takeover of the government by the executive branch, and it leaves me amazed and outraged and frustrated.

[AndyTiedye]

7. I'd Send Lawyers, Lawyers, and MORE LAWYERS!!

I hope the ACLU is on this!

[glitch]

2. My God, this principal and nurse should both be fired immediately.

The parents should threaten to sue the school district if they aren't.

[G_j]

3. the title says a lot

and is right on, imo.

the 'mean-spirit' has become quite acceptable under the guise of authority.
talk about a sleeping monster! We are in serious danger when sadism is embraced.

[lunatica]

4. It's that 'New Normal' Bush was talking about

Every line that is crossed at first outrages people, then if nothing is done to address it it soon becomes something normal. We've been through 8 years of indoctrination to know why the 'Good Germans' allowed things to happen.

Welcome to Post 9/11 America and Big Brother

[LWolf]

5. Sigh.

I'd like to point out that,
having worked in public education for 26 years now, two different states, many different schools, and currently in middle school,

We have never strip-searched a student, and we have never tasered a student.

I talk to teachers from all over the nation every week. I have never met with, or heard from, another teacher who has worked at a school that conducted strip searches or that tasered students.

In other words, while I don't disagree with the articles assessment of the nation, I do disagree with the suggestion that strip searching and tasering of students occurs regularly in public schools.

Why mis-characterize public education to make the point?

Not only that, but Savana Redding's case is 6 years old, and is being handled by the ACLU. A quick search through the Safford School District's website confirms that Kerry Wilson, the vice principal in question, is no longer employed by the district. No big surprise to anyone who has actually worked at a public school.

It's not as if there are no consequences to misconduct in public education.

http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/34657prs20080326.html

[madrchsod]

6. when students are treated as if they were children in a dickens novel...

students will have no respect for authority. i hope the "adults" involved will pay for their transgressions