Because of a zero tolerance drug policy at her Fairfax County, Virginia public school, one teen was given a two week suspension when she was caught taking her birth control pill during lunch. From the Washington Post:
School officials say they can't take chances. They are concerned about liability and safety. Any pills, even nonprescription pills, could be shared with another student who has allergies. And it would be difficult to enforce rules if students were allowed to take some pills but not others."Most people would not know the difference between birth control or some Ritalin or Tylenol or codeine," said Clarence Jones, coordinator for the Fairfax school system's safe and drug-free youth program. "If they are just pulling something out of their pockets and sticking it in their mouths, we don't know what they are taking."
Jones said the rules allow appeals and a hearing, so special circumstances can be considered.
Deb Hauser of Advocates for Youth, a District-based organization that focuses on adolescent sexual health, said, "To put birth control in the same category as illegal drugs or handguns stigmatizes responsible behavior."
Luckily this teenager had made the decision to take birth control with her mother, so when the school called her about the incident, the only surprise was that she was being suspended (with the possibility of expulsion). But what about teens who don't tell their parents they are on birth control? It's obvious this policy has a lot of problems, and criminalizing ibuprofen and other over the counter drugs isn't going to solve the more serious drug problem this school is probably trying to address.
During two weeks of watching television game shows and trying to keep up with homework online, the Fairfax teen, an honor student and lettered athlete, had time to study the handbook closely. If she had been caught high on LSD, heroin or another illegal drug, she found, she would have been suspended for five days. Taking her prescribed birth-control pill on campus drew the same punishment as bringing a gun to school would have.
Thanks to Hannah for the link
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That school is in serious need of revising its policies. Birth control pills are just as dangerous as guns, are they? Puh-leeease. I wonder if it'd been an advil if they would have punished her the same. I think they singled her out to punish her for having sex.
That school is in serious need of firing everyone involved in implementing this suspension. Sure, the policy is ridiculous and needs to be ditched, but the point comes when it's your job to recognize how ridiculous a policy is and not implement it.
High school student suspended for five days for two tylenol tablets
Student suspended after asking teacher if it was ok to take the tylenol she had, also had to undergo mandatory drug counseling
High school student suspended for 10 days for taking vitamins
These three cases came up immediately in a google search and there were many more. Just search "suspended" and "tylenol" or "ibuprofen" or "aspirin"
As much as women are singled out for issues related to sexuality, there are plenty of cases to suggest this may have nothing to do with the fact that it was birth control.
I don't think Miriam was saying she was singled out for using birth control, just that calling her parents and telling them could be problematic and an invasion of her privacy concerning her sexual health. She raises the question of what if her parents didn't know she was taking BC.
But I think it's interesting to address why the school decided to give her 2 weeks suspension for BC pills when heroin would get her 4-5 days.
Oh, I think the policy is absolutely absurd and I would never defend something so ridiculous. I was just responding to the suggestion that this would not have happened had she been taking advil. The real issue in this case seems to be zero-tolerance policies instituted out of fear of lawsuits rather than controlling sexuality.
Heroine would definitely get her expelled. It happened to a girl I knew when I was in junior high and another boy who went to my high school.
Wait, I'm confused. You're not allowed to take any prescription medications during school hours? What about someone that was really really sick and needed special medication five times a day. They'd have to take it during school hours. Would they get suspended too? Or would that be okay because those meds wouldn't imply the person is having pre-marital sex?
You're supposed to take all medication you need to the school nurse, who then dispenses it.
That's ridiculous! I don't know about you, but my high school nursing station always took forever. And that was even if no other kids were there sick. Imagine if the whole place was filled with children with the flu, it'd take even longer. If I had to take daily medications and had to go to them each time to receive them I would have missed some of a class every day.
Also, they weren't even allowed to dispense Ibuprofen if I had a headache. You think I'd want them messing with my fancy prescription drugs? No thank you.
At my high school, and I think this is the policy most places, I was allowed to get Advil, but this was with a note from my doctor, and my mom bought the bottle of Advil and brought it in, and it had to be kept in a locked medicine cabinet in the nurse's office, and only she could dispense it. The only medicines that anyone was allowed to carry around were inhalers and epipens.
Back when I was in high school, I used to carry ibuprofen in a little baggie which I kept either in my backpack or my violin case (orchestra geek here). Of course, in those days my school had a policy that stated students could carry over-the-counter stuff as long as there was a note from the parents on file with the school nurse. I've had problems with migraines since I was a kid, so my mom went down there in person my first day of high school and made damn sure every single administrator knew it was all well and good that I should be toting advil in every day.
This was about a decade ago though; it seems the level of ridiculous in school policy has risen sharply since then.
Yeah see, I have horrible migraines as well. I've taken just about every prescription medication for them that they make and I have to take them right away as soon as the migraine sets in or they may not work at all. Then I'd be stuck with a lovely migraine that usually lasted around 3 days. So that means I have to have the meds on me at all times. None of this going to the nursing station and waiting for them to give me my pills business.
The policy at my school was supposed to be that, if something was time-sensitive like that, then the student was allowed to carry it. That's why inhalers and epipens were allowed -- a kid who needs an inhaler or epipen right now might die if he or she has to wait five minutes.
In my experience, if it was time sensitive, you still needed to have it scheduled in advance and go through the nurse's office. I wound up in the emergency room instead once, because of my asthma.
I meant unplanned time-sensitive, like rescue inhalers, not things that needed to be taken at a specific time. If you started having an asthma attack, you had to go to the nurse for the rescue inhaler? (My sister has asthma, so I ended up knowing the rules for asthma-related things very well. Just about every kid at my school with asthma ended up going to the ER at least once when the rescue inhaler didn't do enough and the teacher wouldn't let the kid go to the nurse to use the nebulizer. It was utterly ridiculous, and dangerous. And all of these cases were the same two teachers.)
Off topic, but if you have severe migraines please please please talk to your doctor about two things: Acupuncture and injectible Imitrex. These two things have helped reduce my suffering considerably. I've tried every prescription in the book - including Imitrex in pill form - and nothing worked for me until a friend recommended the injectible form. When I say "relief came in 45 seconds" I'm not exaggerating. My boyfriend is diabetic so he gave me the shot the first time, and in less then a minute I grabbed my head and said OMG!! I feel so fricken GOOD! Also, the acupuncture helps reduce the frequency of my migraines. Just a suggestion. I can never help mentioning this stuff when I encounter a fellow migraineur.
Huh, I've never tried either. I have tried, as you said, the pill form of Imitrex which did absolutely nothing though. Acupuncture I've always been afraid of because it looks like it would hurt but I could just be making that up because I'm afraid of needles. I don't know anyone that has actually ever had it. Also when you say injectable Imitrex, is that a needle thing? I don't think I'd ever be able to stick a needle in myself (see above). I'm such a chicken with needles! But I don't know what kind of needle its like. Is it like an epipen? Cause those are really tiny and that's a bit different.
I have been considering it. I get migraines a few times a year, but "regular" headaches several times a week
Do you know what an uninsured person may pay for acupuncture?
I paid about 82 for my half hour session with my doctor. It was split up like, 45 for the first half and 37 for the second half I think . . . so if you could find a practitioner who agreed to a certain price beforehand, you ought to be okay. I know for sure that it can be a prohibitive expense but if it works, you'll definitely be saving money on medication. You might look into trying an acupuncture school . . . I'd bet they have discounted rates. Generally, insurance won't pay for it anyway. Mine certainly would not, and I have damn good coverage.
And yes, the injectible imitrex involves a small needle, but is quite like an epipen but without the need to jab yourself in the thigh. I will take the three seconds of a pinch over the 18 hours in pain crying any day of my life. My boyfriend is diabetic, so he showed me how to do it without causing much pain. If you have a friend who can teach you to administer the shots, you'll be fine. I have faith in you :-) The imitrex is also rather expensive. . . my copay was 35 for 4 doses. I offset the cost this way; every time I need a dose, I skip going out to lunch once or twice. Sure, it sucks, but yeah. Any migraine questions for anyone, feel free to email me at jrwittenberg@gmail.com
A number of schools even prevent school nurses from dispensing drugs because of liability concerns.
In my school district, they don't allow over-the-counter medications, and prescription medicines have to be dispensed by the school nurse.
:/
Yup. My daughter couldn't even carry cough drops to school.
"Most people would not know the difference between birth control or some Ritalin or Tylenol or codeine," said Clarence Jones, coordinator for the Fairfax school system's safe and drug-free youth program.
Um...except for the little plastic packages that birth control pills come in, complete with the metal wrapping to remove one small pill at a time. Otherwise, yeah, the pills are exactly the same. *Note sarcasm*
This shouldn't even matter, but a lot of girls go on birth control to control cramping or acne. A prescription drug is between the patient and the doctor- it's no school's business to interfere in that, period.
The school gets involved in dispensing medications because of the liability concerns. Most kids in high school are under 18 and should always be supervised when taking medication, even if it's something like birth control or Tylenol. It might sound silly, because these drugs are often taken without adult supervision at home and a lot of parents don't even know what medications their kids are taking (which is a huge problem). But what if this girl suffered a stroke because of the birth control pills? Unlikely, but indulge me for a moment. What would we be saying then? We would be holding the school accountable for not following their medication policy, and rightfully so. What if this girl was a drug addict and was taking OxyContin that she stole from her parents or teacher? Sometimes the need for safety trumps the right to privacy. Making sure that minor students at a public school are taking prescribed medications safely and as directed is one of them.
This is punishing responsibility and is an awful example to girls who actually take preventative measures against pregnancy.
Why do they wonder why teen pregnancy is an issue when girls are getting punished for using birth control? Honestly, this is completely ridiculous. Once they verified it was NOT any form of a dangerous drug did they just not let her go? What the hell?
Americans and the US media often scream out about the horrors of teen pregnancy, yet they are uncomfortable with young women practicing safe sex.
WTF, Americans. MAKE UP YOUR DAMNED MINDS ALREADY!!!
It's not the horrors of teen pregnancy: it's the horrors of teen sex. It doesn't matter if two people use all the birth control methods under the sun correctly each and every time; it's the fact that they're having sex that drives conservatives up the wall. Pregnancy is just the excuse they give so that they can take away reproductive choices and birth control.
It's reasonable for a school not to allow students to take pills, especially as a response to drug abuse by students. I don't think this has anything to do with the fact that they were birth-control pills (at least, it's not indicated). I assume students with prescriptions must take them at the nurse's office.
Situations like these are a product of an overly litigious society. Being responsible for children for a large portion of the day opens schools up to enormous amounts of liability. Schools get sued for any and everything that happens on the grounds and during schools hours even when they are clearly not a product of negligence or wrongdoing on the staff's part. So they institute ridiculous zero tolerance policies like these to protect themselves from lawsuits. Few schools have adequate funding and costly legal battles are deadly for the school system. While sexism may have played a role, there have been enough students in the news suspended for taking ibuprofen and tylenol that the fear of litigation seems the primary motivation.
I strongly doubt the idiotic policy of this school or those mentioned in other comments have much to do with litigiousness. I think it's much more likely a product of the ongoing, 25 year hysteria of "war on drugs"
No, it's definitely because they are afraid of being sued. The whole reason for having drugs dispensed through the nurse is to make sure that a kid doesn't take the wrong thing and have a reaction, because then the parents would be legally able to sue the school. It's the whole reason we use "wet floor" signs, and it's easily disguised as "safety", but it's actually "saving our asses, even at your expense"
This isn't part of the anti-birth control crusade, necessarily. It's part of the "YOU CAN'T HAVE MEDS IN SCHOOL!!!! EVEN OTC!!!" deal that's been going on for a few years. It's not that it's birth control, it's that it's a MEDICATION... and if we allow ANY all our students will get high!
If it's the same as when I was in school, only the school nurse can give out meds, and if you're caught with OTC, or any, meds that there isn't documentation with the school saying you can have it (and possibly you can't take it without the nurse, I never had to deal with it), you get in trouble. Now, this wasn't really enforced at my high school, it was on the same level as the non-existent dress code, but we all heard about the other schools, where kids got in trouble for it. It's one of the annoying zero-tolerance policies that don't actually work.
It's very common for schools or districts to have policies prohibiting students from possessing or consuming any kind of medication--prescription, OTC, illegal, whatever--while at school. Students who need to take medication during school days are expected to leave the medication with the school office or nurse (if the school has one) and go to the office or nurse to take it when they need it.
Some of these policies are supposedly about preventing kids from abusing drugs, but it's primarily about the fact that school district lawyers are very, very risk averse and see this as a way to protect districts from blame if something does happen to kids.
While it may be dumb, such policies are so common that I'd be doubtful this is actually about the district trying to keep girls from using birth control. If she'd been taking aspirin they'd probably do the same thing (it just wouldn't get as much attention).
Actually yeah, there was a case where a girl was *suspected* of having ibuprofen and was strip searched to find it. I don't think the issue here is that it was birth control, the issue is schools going insane over harmless medications. But it is apalling that they have the same punishment for taking a prescription drug as they do for bringing a gun to school. If they want to make it against the rules, they should still have appropriately scaled punishments. Maybe some detention would be more appropriate.
She should apply to some liberal universities and write her admissions essay about how she feels passionately about civil rights and feminism and accurate medical information and rights for students and stuff, and use this as an example.
Why is it even mentioned that she is "an honours student and lettered athlete"? It seems that that is one of the only ways that students can be valuable to schools. Assuming that she was an average student with other hobbies that didn't include high school sports, would that have made her more demonized?
The news always does that to indicate that this is a good kid, not one who is trying to cause trouble.
While I understand that, would it make a difference if she wasn't an honors student or lettered athlete? I was both, but it bothers me that that somehow makes me in any way better or less likely to "cause trouble." I had plenty of friends who were neither and followed all the rules and plenty who were both and broke the rules incessantly. Why does society need those little labels to make them feel more comfortable?
They want to make it clear that she was a good kid and this wasn't some pattern of breaking rules. If she was the school drug dealer who was suspended a couple times a month it wouldn't be a shocking punishment. But since we're assuming this is a first offence, and not a troublemaking kid, it shows how over the top it was.
This is so ridiculous, but not suprising. I once got detention in high school for taking an ibuprofen in class. My school also had a no-drug policy which included cough drops.
A policy that gives you detention for taking an ibuprofen pill in class is silly; a policy that suspends you for two weeks for taking a birth control pill is execrable and dangerous twaddle.
Zero-tolerance, zero-common-sense rules about medications in schools are disgusting and, unfortunately, ubiquitous... this reminds me about the article a couple weeks back (I think in New York Times) about a 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched by school administrators because another student had accused her of having ibuprofen on school grounds. There are so many things wrong with that I don't know where to start--absence of reasonable suspicion? ibuprofen?! STRIP-SEARCHED?!--and it was made worse by a number of quotes from school officials to the effect that all teenagers are guilty little shits trying to get away with something or another and it's the school's job to keep them in line. It's incredibly telling about their motives: these drug policies are about control and intimidation as much as they're about cover-your-ass, and by golly if that means sexually humiliating adolescent girls, so much the better, we wouldn't want them growing up thinking they have control over their own bodies or anything.
The school policy was no medicines taken without the school nurse. Therefore she should have followed the policy or at least taken the pill (whether it was Tylenol, birth control, or something illegal) in the privacy of a bathroom stall.
The kids who get in trouble for this are usually either blatantly showing their pills around for giggles or taking them in the middle of class, forcing the administration to have to enforce the policy or be accused of treating some students differently.
I'm sure she's not the only student to take a birth control pill during school, the others just do it in a way that the administrators either don't know about it or can ignore it.
Back in my subbing days, I was amazed at the number of students who would develop life-threatening diseases and needed to take their medicine (always in their backpack or purse so they could wave it around in class) with food (always back at the locker) right in the middle of exams. They had to leave to take the medicine RIGHT NOW, they KNEW THEIR RIGHTS, their parents' taxes paid my paycheck, and they usually took 15-20 minutes to swallow the pills and find their way back to classes. They were always happy to be able to finish the test they had already looked at the next day.
When meds had to be checked in with nurses, it was amazing how dosages could be arranged so the student didn't miss a third of the class. In the rare case where a dosage did have to be given during class time, the nurse would come get the child and have him or her returned in less than five minutes. Astounding.
I hadn't thought of that since I never had to take any medicine during school, but I could just see some of the kids I had during student teaching pulling that one. I was in two different districts and both had zero tolerance, so it was off to the nurse in between classes for those who needed meds (with the exception of the severe asthmatics who carried their inhalers).
Zero tolerance policies are for the benefit of spineless administrators and that's about it.
That said, if she knows what the stupid policy is she is still obliged to follow it.....any reason she can't take her pill at home?
If I were her, I would have taken mine in the bathroom stall, or at some other time when I couldn't get caught.
If she was anything like me in high school, she's healthy as a horse and doesn't pay attention to medication policies. I think I went to the nurse twice in four years. I had no idea what the protocol was, so it doesn't surprise me if she had no idea.
What the teachers, staff should have done with her: Give her a warning and tell her she needs to keep the pill with the nurse.
What she should have done (if she had known about the policy): slipped the pill in her mouth and chugged it down with some milk.
Now, what's sad to me is these rules are supposedly in place to keep kids from taking prescription drugs to get high, prescription drugs that could make it hard for them to learn and pass classes. The straight-A student took a safe, appropriate drug, but now has to miss two weeks of school, definitely putting her behind in her studies. Weird how the rule was originally intended to stop kids from getting behind.
My high school's rule was that you could have pills as long as they were in their original container. My middle school, however, had the same rules as this school. Because I happened to be undergoing issues with severe anxiety attacks at the time, that meant that I spent quite a bit of time in the school clinic, popping pills.
What bothers me most about this is the blatant lack of trust in the students. At my high school, most students who were into drugs did them outside of school, in the parking lot across the street. They weren't too interested in actually coming to school. Maybe drug deals went on inside the school (I hung out with the AP class-taking, cross country-running, violin-playing nerds, so I don't know), but it seems to me that they're punishing every student for fearmongering.
This is really not about what kind of drug she took, about her being sexually active, or damning her for protecting herself from pregnancy. Miriam brought up the point that the young woman's parents knew she was on the PIll, but if they didn't, what hell that would raise. While I am sympathetic to that, really I am, I understand the zero-tolerance. Kids are allowed to have drugs they need, but they need to be kept in the nurse's office. Also, birth control pills are not a pill that needs to be taken every few hours... she can take her pill either before school at home, or after school at home or at a friends house if she is afraid parents might see it.
The drug rules in schools are indeed out there though... when I was in high school, a teacher told a class I was in that she was not supposed to give out Band-aids, because the kind that were medicated on the gauze counted as "medicine" and thus could not be distributed. I never saw this enforced, but knowing that teachers were being told this... wow.
I just graduated from Fairfax County public schools last spring. The admins there are a bunch of bureaucratic spineless scumsucking policy worshippers who think their job is not to educate students, but to control them. This doesn't surprise me. That being said- that girl is a dumbass. I took drugs (legal ones, for legit reasons) all the time in school. Never got caught. And hell yeah, I knew damn well that all hell would break loose if anyone saw me taking naproxen or even an iron pill on campus. Coming from that school system, I can tell you right now, that girl knew what would happen if they saw her taking her birth control at school. My bet is, she was trying to cause trouble. Good for her, but she knew what she was doing. Either that or she just transferred in.
Oh, and also- why the hell should the school have the right to control student's medications? My medical issues are between me and my doctor. None of the school's business. If they really wanted to fight drug use, they would have a zero-tolerance mandatory expulsion policy for being high on campus during school. Not for taking legit prescribed or OTC meds.
"Oh, and also- why the hell should the school have the right to control student's medications? My medical issues are between me and my doctor. None of the school's business."
Well, the school needs to know some things, in case of an emergency. If a kid needs to go to the ER in the middle of the school day, the school needs to be able to tell them what medications the kid is on and any conditions the kid has, so that the hospital won't give them anything that interacts or makes something worse.
Also, plenty of drugs have off-label recreational uses. Most ADD drugs, if used improperly, can give the same sort of high as speed. Plenty of painkillers and antidepressants can have off-label uses, too. (In most colleges, there's an underground market in ADD drugs -- kids with a diagnosis get a prescription for more than they need, and sell the extra at about $30 a pill.)
For me, having the nurse know about my medical conditions was a very good thing. There was one month, in my junior year, when my rhematologist put me on a new medication that was supposed to help reduce the swelling in my joints. It was a brand-new thing, once a day rather than two or three times a day like the older medicines had been, and was supposed to be a great breakthrough. It did reduce the swelling. However, it also tightened all the muscles in my back so much that any sort of movement led to excruciating pain. For a while there, I was going to the nurse to lie down practically once a day. One day in gym class, I told the teacher in the locker room that my back hurt too much, I couldn't do anything, and I couldn't even change into gym clothes because I wasn't going to go through the pain of lifting my arms over my head to change my shirt twice, just to sit at the side of the gym. She told me that no, I WAS taking gym that day, we were each going to run a mile, and I WOULD run it. I walked out of the locker room and went to the nurse. When the gym teacher noticed I was gone, she figured that I had gone to the nurse and called the nurse's office to tell them to send me right back and that I was in MAJOR trouble for leaving class without permission. The nurse, who knew exactly what was going on with my back, informed the teacher that no, I was perfectly within my rights in coming to the nurse's office, and the teacher should have known that from the dozens of notes from the doctor in my gym file.
Do you also think an adult's place of employment has the right to know what medications they're taking, in case they get taken to the ER from work and can't tell medical personnel themselves? People who take things or have ongoing conditions with serious medication contraindications usually take care of that with a medicalert tag, children and adults alike. Why should a 16 year old have to forfeit their privacy when taking something that isn't likely to have any impact in an emergency?
Sure, schools should be informed about kids under 14 or so who can't be expected to accurately report their medical history. It's also perfectly reasonable for schools to know about diabetes, asthma, seizure disorders, food allergies and the like so they can be better prepared in an emergency, and if a family wants to inform the school about other conditions so the nurse can appropriately advocate for a student (as in your story), that's wonderful. But why on earth does the school need to know about birth control, ibuprofen, seasonal allergy medication, SSRIs, or antibiotics that a high schooler is taking? It's an unreasonable and unjustifiable privacy violation, especially in the case of things like BCPs and psych meds that often have stigma attached. You better believe that in my small school, everyone knew why some kids had to go to the nurse midday. HIPAA be damned, when the nurse's office is full of kids with whatever stomach virus is going around there's going to be some information leakage.
i had major surgery in high school and despite being on crutches, I hobbled my way to the nurses' office every day to take my Motrin 800s. I took my birth control for POCS every night before i went to bed to avoid either having to go to the nurse or risk being in trouble. I kept a small bottle of motrin in my car in later years, so if I had a headache, i could get myself off campus before taking anything.
Yes, it wasn't fun. Yes, I think that zero tolerance really needs to be reconsidered to consider cases of tylenol and birth control. But realistically, this student should have known the rules and could have made other arrangements that would have prevented a situation like this.
i understand the school is trying to stop kids from selling their vicodins at lunch, and there can be issues of irresponsibility with children, so most schools have blanket policies that drugs are administered by the nurse. (i *do* support the school notifying the parents, though....as long as a child is legally dependent on their parents, i can't support parents not knowing about what is going on with their child medically.)
the punishments are unduly harsh (duh....drugs aren't as severe as bringing a weapon), and i think that's the problem. i can't tell if the school is being discriminatory....have male students caught taking their antibiotics at lunch been punished equally harshly?
these issues are so hard for schools to deal with. i mean, at what point does a child become responsible enough to deal with their own meds?
i see this less as a fear of sex than another ridiculous example of the U.S.'s confusion about that fuzzy boundary when children become adults.
Why do you support the school contacting the parents of a minor child taking birth control? In most states minors do not need parental permission to obtain birth control or seek treatment for an STD. Furthermore, if it had been advil or tylenol, she could have walked into any store and bought herself some, without parental permission.
Why do you support the school contacting the parents of a minor child taking birth control? In most states minors do not need parental permission to obtain birth control or seek treatment for an STD. Furthermore, if it had been advil or tylenol, she could have walked into any store and bought herself some, without parental permission.
I get the legal reasons why this rule was in place, but I still find it startling every time one of these rules is actually enforced. At my high school there was the same kind of zero-tolerance policy, but students frequently would say "I have a headache, does anyone have any ibuprofen?" out loud in classes. I never once heard a teacher even acknowledge that it was going on, let alone punish someone for it. They very consistently looked the other way. But then I was in AP classes and often my fellow students and my teachers were on the same side in criticisms of the administration.
Most of my teachers in that situation would just give the kid some advil. Not in the younger grades, but by grade 10 or 11 the teachers were like "this is stupid, you're not kinder gardeners"
There are a lot more reasons other than regulating illicit drugs behind policies such this. Most school districts have similar policies. I'm a teacher and last year I had to leave a classroom full of students to go retrieve a girl from the bathroom who swallowed a whole bottle of Tylenol. She didn't have the Tylenol with her, she asked another student who "innocently" had a bottle of it in her purse for some because she said she had a headache, went to the bathroom and took about two dozen of them. The kid that gave them to her didn't think that her friend was going to swallow the whole bottle at the time. This sort of thing, among other reasons, is why we regulate all medications taken at school and require they be handed out by the nurse, who will only give out exactly what the student needs. (Plus, it is generally a good idea for the school health professional to be aware of what medications students are taking, in case a student suddenly has an adverse reaction.) While I think suspension is a bit of an extreme response, I don't really see why this is a feminist issue. It's a student safety issue. If it had been anything other than birth control pills, would you have cared? It's this sort of hypersensitivity that is really annoying about this blog. You're right on so many things, but then there's the occasional complete overreaction like this that just brings down your credibility and gives the Bill O'Reillys of the world so much fodder. I'm sure that the school nurse would have been happy to confidentially dispense this medication for her, if she needed to take it during school hours each day. Although, since it doesn't matter what time one takes birth control pills, just that you need to take them at the same time every day, there is no reason she needed to have them at school in the first place. The school was not telling her she couldn't use birth control or regulating her sexuality. They were simply trying to enforce a rule, albeit in an overly reactionary way, intended to protect students from potential harm.
Do you really think a zero tolerance drug policy would have kept that student from attempting suicide? I don't.
Privacy issues are feminist issues. If everything in the system works perfectly, a restrictive policy regulating OTC and prescription drugs at school isn't a big hardship. But in real life, a lot of school nurses aren't as respectful of student privacy as they need to be, and understaffed health offices with long wait times can make taking a pill a much bigger chunk of time than it needs to be.
Well, no, I don't think that would have prevented her from attempting suicide, because it obviously didn't. We have a zero tolerance policy at our school. But, I also think that one has to consider that schools operate under the legal principle of "in loco parentis," meaning that school have the equivalent legal rights and responsibilities of parents with regard to many aspects of student life. This includes regulating student safety, which sometimes must include applying certain limitations on student privacy.
At my high school I think there were policies about certain prescription drugs, but I don't really know what they were. I know we had cards that they handed out at fire drills and the cards said, among other things, what drugs we were allowed to have. But no one ever stopped me from carrying around advil, or checked if my card said it was ok. Maybe they would have checked for something more serious.
The nurse would also hand out ibuprofen to any girl who said she had cramps. One time I told her I had already taken ibuprofen that morning and she said she couldn't give me any more in that case, and I said oh wait nevermind I didn't, and she gave me the pills anyway.
But they were zero-tolerance on alcohol or pot.
My school district for high school and middle school had similar policies, but the extent to which they were enforced varied. I remember in middle school one of my friends who has type-1 diabetes (the genetic type) was able to carry her diabetes supplies with her everywhere (which was obvious because she had a special case for them). In high school they made her lock it up. This was before the time of insulin pumps and she'd be at the nurses office every two to three hours. The excuse the principal gave her parents was that she could sell insulin shots to other students... um, yah, she is really going to waste medicine her life depends on, on another student.
I got away with carrying my migraine medicine (there wasn't really a migraine medication approved for teens at the time and I can't take benzodiazapenes (sp?)) which happened to be codeine. I just kept it to myself and only my closest friends knew. On the off chance something happened at school and I was taken to the hospital, I had a medic-alert necklace. (for those who don't know, medic-alert gives you a number on your necklace, bracelet, anklet, etc, that corresponds to your file number at their 24-hr call center. You and your doctor update them on your medications, allergies, conditions, etc, and they will not only immediately verbally tell the calling doctor/nurse your info, but fax it as well).
I can see the issue with many medications, students selling pills or giving them to friends, but seriously, it is happening anyway they are just sneakier about it. Yes, in rare instances a teen will purposely overdose on OTC meds, but I can guarantee that most high school girls will carry some sort of pain killer with them about once a month without school officials knowing.
This is typical FCPS. I graduated from Langley High School, an FCPS school, in 2002 and remember many a guidance counseling session on "drug abuse." At the beginning of every school term, some overly officious member of the guidance counseling team would interrupt class to give us a half hour lecture on how, "Advil is A DRUG! Caffeine is A DRUG!" Usually swilling one or two highly caffeinated beverages during the course of the lecture while reeking of tobacco. Most of my friends and I would smuggle in our Midol, but I guess since we were good students, and most of us were Asian and Southeast Asian, security never checked us. We laughed about it, but I know some students were suspended for carrying nonprescription drugs during my time there. Meanwhile, rather than alerting students to the potential dangers and addictive qualities of certain nonprescription substances, I think all the rule served to do was lessen our regard for the risk involved in experimenting with the actual drugs, marijuana on the milder end and cocaine on the more severe end, that had become common at most high school parties by our senior year. Of course, this is from the same school system that once sent a police officer to our house when my brother was in the fifth or sixth grade because he'd made a joke about blowing something up and a teacher decided that must mean we were concealing explosives in our bedrooms.
You see the problem is when something does go wrong people always want to point a finger at the higher ups not the individual themselves. If this girl's parents didn't know she was taking BC and had a deadly reaction in school, we would all be blaming her parents and the school, not the girl. When those boys shot up Columbine we went from blaming them to blaming their parents and teachers for not knowing what was going on in their lives and not stepping in. I completely understand the schools wanting to cover their asses. As someone said before many school districts in the U.S. have very little money as it is do you really think they can survive if they're sued.
Let's say another boy made a bomb threat at your brother's school and everyone took it as a joke and the next day he came in and blew up a classroom. What would be your response then?
I don't think this girl should have been suspended for 2 weeks maybe just letting her know the right way to do it so she doesn't do it again, or maybe a 1 hour detention, if they need to show proof they took some kind of action.
Here's an online copy of the Fairfax County student handbook which outlines their regulations regarding prescription drugs.
The news article is somewhat misleading. A first time offense of being under the influence of an illegal or prescription drug has a minimum 5 day suspension (a subsequent offense has a 10 day suspension). Having posession of any illegal or prescription drug has a minimum 10 day suspension. Posession of a weapon has a mandatory 10 day suspension with a reccomendation for expulsion for 1 year.
Seriously, when they announced the whole "War on Drugs" thing way back when how many expected it to be on vitamins & aspirin?
The school has a "zero tolerance" policy on "sharing cough drops", WTF??? No wonder the schools can't graduate students w/ common sense anymore, they don't have it themselves.
I went off my meds in highschool because I was embarressed to be on them. I just stopped going. The nurse was always late so I'd be late to class after lunch. I felt shamed. Depression meds are something you are told to be ashamed of. So I was.
I can handle myself now. And i'm glad I'm med free. but I shouldn't have made that decision because it was either that or blatant invasion of my privacy.
that's not really a choice.
time to elect a new school board
Generally I think these rules are ineffective and ridiculous but the rule was in place and the fact that it was a birth control pill was irrelevant. A pill's a pill and she shouldn't have had it at school.
Is suspending her excessive? Yes, if she hasn't had any other discipline problems but I'm not sure if this is really a *women's* issue so much as a comment on how educators are ill equipped to deal with real problems, especially drug problems.
It just occurred to me that at my elementary school the nurse was only there on Wednesdays. I wonder what they did with kids who needed regular medication? Probably an office aide was in charge of it.
We had a similar problem with the nurse having to go from school to school. I believe in middle school the office was in charge of doling out medicine rather than the nurse.
I do recall in high school that my mother signed some kind of form saying it was okay for the nurse to give me advil and gave me some sort of generic "I approve of this medication" note to keep in my purse. I generally kept my own pills with me anyway, and most girls did. I even remember one high school math teacher offering advil to a student who was having cramps.
I just checked our most recent student handbook and they say that OTC meds are okay with a parent note but prescriptions must be checked into the nurse's office and you should go there between classes. Yes, because the best time to go is the time when everyone else has to go (like the restroom).
I think two weeks is still excessive, all she needed was a warning.
The argument that having the meds handed out to the student protects the school from liability is absurd. In my state, schools are not required to have school nurses at all. And, like many of you mentioned, many school only have nurses there part-time. That means that the office staff will be handing out the meds - what makes them so qualified? If there were a problem after the school secretary gave a child their meds, especially if they mixed it up with another students meds (something that couldn't happen if the student kept the meds themselves) then the school would be at an even greater risk.
Furthermore, if the school is concerned that the student took something illicit, they can do a urine drug screen (many schools have policies allowing this) and if it came back negative for anything illicit, let it go!
I had a locker full of ibuprofen, tylenol, allergy meds and an asthma inhaler when I was in high school. I never had a note, never registered it with anyone and no one ever questioned it. There were illicit drug problems back then, but there was apparently a lot more common sense amongst the school administration than there is now.