Pubdate: Thu, 19 Feb 2015
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Geoffrey Vendeville
Page: A4

BOLDUC VOWS INVESTIGATION OF HIGH SCHOOL STRIP SEARCH

QUEBEC - On the ropes for defending the strip search of a student at 
a Quebec City high school, Education Minister Yves Bolduc said he 
will order an investigation to determine whether the school acted 
appropriately.

The education ministry also plans to tighten the protocol for 
searches in high schools, Bolduc's aide said.

"We will ask a person external to, and independent of, the school 
board to evaluate what happened, write a report and, at that moment, 
we will see based on the facts what we should do in the future," 
Bolduc said in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

He told reporters the day before that school officials can strip 
search students on suspicion that they are selling drugs, as long as 
the search is done "respectfully " and according to the rules. He was 
commenting on a report saying staff of Neufchatel High School in 
Quebec City instructed a 15- yearold student to remove her clothes 
and checked them for drugs.

The Commission scolaire de la Capitale said in a statement on Tuesday 
that it will launch its own investigation. The school board's 
spokesperson, Marie-Elaine Dion, said in an email that such searches 
are "exceptional."

"In our practices, only clothes are searched, not the individual. 
There is no direct contact with the student to frisk them," she said.

On Wednesday morning, Bolduc dodged reporters on his way to and from 
the Liberals' caucus, but he couldn't hide in question period.

"All the parents of Quebec are troubled by this situation," Parti 
Quebecois education critic Nicole Leger said. Using a very apt 
expression, she urged Bolduc to take a stand: "Mettez vos culottes!" 
("Put your pants on!").

Later in the halls of the assembly, she told journalists that Bolduc 
has "trivialized" the incident by depicting it as an isolated case. 
She demanded that Quebec ban the practice in schools.

Bolduc's remarks travelled fast, making the rounds on Time Magazine's 
website as well as in newspapers from Britain to Turkey.

His press attache, Yasmine Abdelfadel, pointed out that student strip 
searches are allowed under the rules outlined in a Surete du Quebec 
guidebook for teachers, which was based on a 1998 Supreme Court case.

The case involved a junior high school vice-principal who, in front 
of a plain clothes RCMP officer, searched two students suspected of 
selling marijuana on school property. The decision supported the 
right to search students on "reasonable grounds," but specified that 
it must be conducted in a "sensitive manner" and be "minimally intrusive."

The decision was put to the test eight days later. On Dec. 8, 1998, a 
principal and gym teacher in a high school in southwestern Ontario 
strip-searched 20 ninth-grade boys looking for stolen money. The 
incident was widely condemned and led to a mass student walkout the next day.
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