I must've missed this news.

How disgusting. This is completely crazy. Ugh. Good to see Colbert taking aim on this.

At this point it may not be relevant, but the letter from the school cited in the comedy piece refers to Freesia's birth control pills being a "controlled substance".

Wikipedia has information on what a "controlled substance" is commonly considered to be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_substance

...in other words, an intoxicating, addictive, or otherwise abusable, perhaps "recreational" drug. Decades ago it was mostly applied to opiates, and expanded considerably to include numerous other classes of psychoactive drugs, mostly in the 1960s and 70s.

Maybe the school thinks that birth control pills could be a "stepping stone" though to harder drugs? Or vice versa?

Without digging and trying to find out what the school or district policy actually is it's hard to say if they just ban controlled substances or all drugs from student possession. We'll guess and say it's more likely the latter, or else kids could take things to school like nonprescription cough syrups which have an intoxicating effect but aren't technically considered "narcotics".

Anyway, birth control pills are not "controlled substances", though this is obviously one of the issues that Colbert is playing off of with the "war on dope" theme.

One would think that some lawyer type vetted the language used in a letter like this, and if so they should have found better terms to use than "controlled substance". But we're looking through what we can find on tis story and its odd that no other news story has commented on this erroneous choice of words by the school official(s).

I'm disgusted at the school/school system. What's next? Expelling a diabetic for taking their insulin?

I love Colbert's clip on it. I hope the school system gets some serious shit for what they did.

I remember being infuriated by this story when you first posted it and writing a letter. It's nice to put some faces with the story

This was on my local news as well since I live near the school- of course I was outraged and COULD NOT believe the punishment. If the rule is no medications/controlled substances, etc. then OK, maybe there should be some repercussion when said rule is broken- the severity of which should be based on what the student took. Though I wonder- would she have been in trouble if it was an aspirin? Was she being made an example of not so much for going against school policy but because she is on the pill? B/c you know- if she's on the pill, she MUST be having sex (as a TEENAGER!!!), and if she's having sex (out of wedlock!!!), then she's DEFINITELY a brazen hussy!

Just so you know, it's common policy for schools to ban all prescription and non-prescription drugs on campus unless they are dispensed by a nurse or other designated person on staff with parental permission. The logic behind this is that a student may give it to another student who has an undiagnosed allergy to whatever it is. The school would then be subject to legal action from the parents. It's a CYA policy. Teachers aren't even supposed to have anything either. During my student teaching, one of my students was suspended for possessing ibuprofen and my mentor teacher was reprimanded for having Excedrin for her migraines and prenatal vitamins in her possession (and yes, she was pregnant).

This story is one of the many examples why no tolerance policies/The War on Drugs are stupid, irrational, and do more harm than good. I fully agree that you shouldn't be noticably high at school, but what is wrong with taking one Tylenol/Sudafed/Midol/BC pill? Especially since that last one is something that public schools should be encouraging.

I know this was satire, but I do have a problem with the way this story is always introduced, saying she was an honor student/varsity athlete/average perfect American student. Even if she was a straight-F student who skipped class and used heroin on the weekends, this would still be just as much of an injustice.

I highly doubt zero tolerance policies had anything to do with this. I'd imagine that any woman who was involved with the situation would see the obvious logic of WHY she had to take the pill when she did. Who wants to bet the REAL reason for this was just more paranoia over teenage sex? I wouldn't find it surprising that more conservative-minded administrators would be bothered by high-school kids taking birth control pills...

Oy, and people wonder why I quit being a teacher. *shakes head*

Another added "reason" for these "no-meds for any reason" policies is this: kids steal stuff from other kids all the time, so it's not only an issue with kids sharing pills intentionally, it's a problem with kids stealing stuff and taking it.

Therefore I "read" this particular case as "OMG what if a boy stole her woman pills and swallowed one and his penis dried up?" kind of fear-mongering.

But seriously, a friend who works at a day camp had this sort of thing happen - much younger kids, not birth control. But the parent didn't tell the camp leaders their daughter had an inhaler, and another child "found" it and broke it. If the camp staff had know she had the inhaler in the first place, they would have made sure she had it in her pocket, not 20+ feet away in her bag! Inhalers and other meds aren't cheap, and what if that little girl needed it? She wouldn't have been able to take the inhaler because it was busted. That's the parent's fault for not telling the staff.

For older kids, though, these policies are insulting. Problem is, all children are essentially infants under the eyes of the law.

We're affected by this here in Canada too. Here on the east coast most of our schools don't have nurses either, so secretaries (Gods and Goddesses bless them!) end up giving out meds. Their unions should be raising hell for that, I think. The teacher's union sure did.

I agree with what a lot of you have said - no wonder kids have no common sense these days!

I'll leave you with a quote I once read, attributed to Mark Twain: "In the first place, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then he created school boards."

Yup.

In re the SCOTUS review of the strip-search looking for Advil and ibuprofen, see:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=08-479#opinion1

The majority court opinion found
(a) the strip search did violate the 4th amendment protection of this student's person
(b) the prior conflicting opinions at the lower court level in similar cases created ambiguity enough that the individual school officials involved should, in this case, retain their limited protection against liability for their actions.
(c) the Court did not address the liability of the school district itself, as the lower court had not ruled on that issue

In dissents:
(a) Stevens and Ginsburg dissented in that they thought the school officials involved clearly exceeded the threshold of reasonableness that would shield them from liability
(b) Justice Thomas, unsurprisingly, did not think the search violated any of the students 4th amendment protections, and anyways, The War On Drugs Trumps All Else. He even states,in as many words, that the strip search was "reasonable and justified." (There's a *reason* Clarence Thomas was afforded the abysmally low level of recommendation of fitness from the ABA when he was nominated for the Supreme Court)

This stupid country.