Drugs, Not Hugs
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.
So says the Drug Policy Alliance, which studies these sorts of things and lobbies for "Reason, Compassion, and Justice" when it comes to the drug war.
More info here.
Where have you gone, Lindsay Earl?
Update: More info on the law's bad effects (and what to do about it), courtesy of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.
The bill is up for a vote tomorrow.
