Don't Strip-Search Eighth-Graders Over Nonexistent Vape Pens, Please

Or even real ones, frankly.

A brand new craze is sweeping the nation, but sadly it's nothing so whimsical as hula-hoops, pet rocks or Beanie Babies — it is "strip-searching teenagers over vape pens."

A mother in Detroit is suing her daughter's charter school, George Crockett Academy, alleging that the school's principal violated the eighth-grader's constitutional rights by having two female staff members strip-search her in search of a vape pen. They never actually found any vape pen, but they did humiliate and probably scar her for life, so there's that!

To make matters extra-horrifying, the reason they did this was because a student with a documented history of bullying this girl told them that she had a vape pen stuffed in her underwear. At no point did any of the adults involved here even stop to think "Hey, how would this other student even know that, given that we know they are not friends? Is it perhaps possible that this other girl is lying in order to subject the girl she bullies to a humiliating strip search?"

According to the lawsuit, the 14-year-old girl was taken into an office by the two female staff members, forced to take off her shirt and pants, lift up her bra and fold down her underwear. To add to the humiliation, she was on her period and one of the two windows in the office was uncovered.

Who here remembers what eighth grade was like? I don't think I made it through a single bra-shopping trip with my mom without dying of humiliation. Everything that happens to you feels like the worst and most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of the world, so I cannot even begin to imagine how this poor girl feels. Not to mention how she will feel every time she sees those staffers in the hallway at school. As an adult, I would feel horrified and violated — and people want to do this to children? Over a hypothetical vape pen?

“It has long been said that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door,” the mother’s attorney, Hannah Fielstra, told the Detroit Metro Times . “The school had no justifiable reason to strip search an eighth-grade girl for a vape pen. It is not a weapon and did not present an imminent danger to anyone. There were no credible threats of violence. A strip search is one of the most invasive searches recognized by law and it was performed on a teenage girl during school. The circumstances of this strip search were not only humiliating, but her constitutional rights were violated. The school went too far.”

Yes, they did. And I hope this mother sues the living crap out of them for having done so, and wins. There is precedent here. In 2009 the Supreme Court ruled that "school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old Arizona girl when they strip searched her based on a classmate’s uncorroborated accusation that she previously possessed ibuprofen."

Not gonna lie, I truly do not know what the hell to even do with that sentence. I am at a loss. Is there a use for ibuprofen that I don't know about? Are the kids getting high off of Advil?

Even more shocking than all of this is the fact that what happened to this girl is not even a remotely unique case. In March, six kids in Wisconsin were strip-searched over suspected vape devices. In February, a girl in Oklahoma was forced to show her bra in front of another student because a teacher also suspected she maybe had a vape pen on her — they didn't find one in that case, either. Last year, an Ohio middle-schooler was forced to strip down to her underwear in search of a vape pen she did not have.

 This is the problem with moral panics .

It's not just that people are more likely to believe things that aren't true, but that they are willing to go to extremes because "The fate of the world is at stake!" or "The children are going to be severely harmed and or corrupted in some fashion!" They become willing to do things they would otherwise find absurd or even abhorrent, because that is what people do when they are panicked. They don't act rationally.

It's not irrational to want kids to not vape but there has to be some understanding of scale. It's not as if any of these school officials were concerned that these students had a bomb strapped to their chest and school staff had ten minutes to deactivate it before it blew up the whole school. Even if they didn't turn out to be wrong in these cases, we have to understand, as a society, that it is objectively worse for adults to strip search a 14-year-old girl than it is for her to have had a vape pen on her. It is illegal to look at child porn, it should be just as illegal to look at naked children just because you think they might be vaping.

It is very, very important that children understand consent when it comes to their bodies. Schools should not be teaching them that it is not okay for them to say "No" when an adult wants them to take their bra off. That's not okay.

If a teacher catches a kid vaping in the bathroom and wants to give them detention for that — sure, fine, do that. If they start puffing on it in history class, take it away. If they're just really terrified that maybe the kid has a vape on them somewhere, call their parents like the school nurse did when she thought I was on drugs the day my mom accidentally gave me nighttime sinus pills in the morning. There is no need, no matter how bad or dangerous or evil someone thinks vaping is, to ever conduct a strip-search of a child in a non-emergency situation.

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