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: Marian Scott
Page: A1

STRIP SEARCHES NOT ACCEPTABLE: EXPERTS

Parents, School Officials and Legal Experts Oppose Action

If I felt that it needed to go any further, certainly I would be 
involving the parents immediately, and I would certainly be calling 
upon the police as well.

Joyce Shanks doesn't want to contemplate what she'd do if her child 
were strip-searched at school.

"I would lose it and so would my husband," said the Dollard- 
des-Ormeaux mother, whose daughter attends Secondary I at Royal West 
Academy in Montreal West.

"I'm in shock," Shanks said of the strip search of a 15- year-old 
girl at a Quebec City high school on Feb 12. "It's shocking that 
there is even a potential for a policy like that to exist in this day 
and age in Quebec. It's barbaric. It's a violation."

A howl of outrage greeted Education Minister Yves Bolduc's comments 
Tuesday condoning the strip search of the girl, whose teacher thought 
she might be carrying marijuana.

Bolduc said Tuesday it's permissible to strip-search a child for 
drugs or weapons as long as it's done "very respectfully."

But on Wednesday, he backtracked, vowing to re-examine the policy 
allowing such searches by school staff.

Shanks said the very act of forcing a teenager to take off all her 
clothes shows a total lack of respect.

The girl was ordered to strip behind a blanket so her clothes could 
be checked for drugs after her teacher confiscated her cellphone and 
discovered a text message the girl had sent offering to sell pot to a 
friend. The girl later said the message was a joke.

Shanks said strip-searching a child is humiliating and goes against 
the message parents and educators need to instil in children, which 
is to "listen to our own boundaries and internal compass."

"It's a violation of power. Teachers are meant to teach. They're not 
meant to request that someone remove their clothes."

Bob Mills, director general of the Lester B. Pearson School Board, 
said staff at the West Island board's schools would never strip- 
search a student and that in his 14 years at the board "nothing like 
that has ever come to my attention."

If a student is suspected of bringing drugs or other forbidden 
objects to school, staff should notify police, he said. Under no 
circumstances would a principal or teacher take it upon him or 
herself to search a student, he said. And if police officers proposed 
to search a child, the school would first insist that a parent be 
present, he added.

Mills said reports of the strip search have created uneasiness among parents.

"The responsibility then comes back to the school board to reassure 
our community that we're acting in the best interests of students and 
that if such a situation were to develop, we would ask our police 
partners to intervene," he said.

Angela Campbell, associate dean of graduate studies in law at McGill 
University, said telling a student to strip naked does not seem 
"justified in the circumstances. This is not a case of a person who 
was carrying a weapon or anything destructive and the person was 
asked to strip to completely nothing," she said.

Schools have the right to search students' belongings, but the 
"search has to be reasonable and the search also has to be consistent 
with the idea of personal dignity," she said.

"It's one thing to ask him to empty his pockets or to show the 
contents of a locker if there's a reasonable ground for believing 
that a rule has been broken ... but it's quite another to ask a 
person to strip down to being completely bare," she said.

"To me," she added, "there's a clear problem with respecting the 
dignity of the student."

Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey said that even though the Supreme 
Court has ruled that schools have the right to search students' 
lockers, forcing a student to strip naked could go too far.

"I would have no hesitation to say that's unreasonable, contrary to 
dignity and everything else," he said.

Michael Cristofaro, the principal of Westmount High School, said such 
a thing would not happen there.

"It's certainly not the protocol that we would follow in this school. 
I think that it really is about dignity and respect," he said.

If a student were suspected of carrying drugs, school staff would 
first speak with him or her and possibly search the child's locker or 
ask her to turn out her pockets or take off her shoes.

"If I felt that it needed to go any further, certainly I would be 
involving the parents immediately, and I would certainly be calling 
upon the police as well," Cristofaro said.

Carol Meindl, executive director of the Quebec Federation of Home and 
School Associations ( QFHSA), said her organization plans to discuss 
the issue at an education subcommittee meeting on Friday.

She said the QFHSA does not have an official position on strip 
searches, but her personal view is that such a search is an invasion 
of privacy that could only be justified if there were a well-founded 
fear of a threat to security.

"If the fear was that the child had a concealed weapon, and they had 
already looked in the locker, looked in the school bag, and still had 
reason to believe the student had a concealed weapon, then yes, 
perhaps, under certain circumstances it might be necessary," she 
said. "For drugs, I'd say no." Meindl added that while confiscating a 
student's cellphone is permissible, a teacher should not read the 
messages on it any more than she should read a child's private diary. 
"It's the same sort of thing," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom