| The New York Civil Liberties Union isn't too pleased with the Red Creek Central School District (which covers parts of Cayuga and Wayne counties) over a search of students on a bus that took place on April 9.
According to WSYR-9 in Syracuse, the search was for drugs and tobacco. The 23 students who were searched were told to, among other things, fold over their waistbands. These students also had to take off their socks and shoes during the search.
Out of the 23 students who were searched, all the search found was a marijuana pipe on one student. That student has been charged for possessing the pipe.
The NYCLU called on the school district to issue a public apology yesterday to those who were subjected to this inappropriate and invasive search.
The New York Civil Liberties Union has called on the Red Creek Central School District in upstate New York to publicly apologize to high school students subjected to illegal, humiliating and invasive searches by state police and school officials.
In a letter to Superintendent David Sholes, the NYCLU also urged the district to take steps to prevent invasive searches and protect students' rights. Students subjected to the April 9 searches were passengers on a school bus parked outside of Red Creek High School. Every student was pulled off the bus and searched.
"This was one of the most humiliating moments of my life," said 18-year-old graduating senior Stephanie Schultz, who is attending college in the fall. "My school taught me about the Constitution and about my rights, and then pushed them both aside and made me feel like my rights didn't matter."
Schultz and at least 17 other students on a Williamson BOCES school bus were removed from the bus in mixed gender pairs and ordered to the Red Creek High School principal's office by a uniformed state trooper. In the principal's office, the students, male and female, were subjected to invasive searches in full view of each other.
You can read the NYCLU letter to the superintendent here.
These types of searches at schools aren't out of the ordinary. My local high school, where my sister is a senior, recently had a search that involved police officers with drug-sniffing dogs going from car to car in the parking lot looking for drugs. I'm not sure what, if any, reasoning these officers had to conduct such a search, but it's not the first time a search of that nature has taken place. |
