Blogger Susanna of Cut on the Bias came across an astounding scandal involving an eighth-grade sex party and school administrators whose invasive medical demands drew the attention of the New York Civil Liberties Union. As you'll see, even if the school administrators were well-intentioned, they went about it the wrong way:
School administrators in Washington Heights forced several eighth-graders to be tested for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases after they attended a "hooky party" last spring...The civil liberties union is representing two of approximately 11 girls who cut school on April 11 and attended a "hooky party" where there reportedly was sexual activity, [NYCLU executive director Donna] Lieberman said.
"The next school day when they went back to school they were summoned to the principal's office and effectively suspended," Lieberman said.
She said the girls were told they had to be tested for pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and could not return to school without a doctor's note that included the test results. One male student also attended the party, but he was not required to be tested for diseases...
It gets worse. When two students returned with doctor's notes indicating that the appropriate tests had been run, the school demanded additional notes indicating the test results, which can only mean they planned to take some action if the girls tested positive for pregnancy or an STD.
Susanna's outraged at the focus of the Newsday article, and thinks the school was probably trying to do the right thing:
That's right, folks, what's important about this situation is not that eighth graders are screwing around, but that their privacy is being compromised. There's not a comment even in passing from anyone in the article about how awful it is that the girls left school for a sex party, no one mentions the parents, no one talks about ways to educate the young people that sex at 13 is not the smartest thing you can do.
Now, I'm not saying that it's the school's business to send the girls off for those tests, especially since apparently they didn't make the same requirement of a boy from the same school at the same party. But it's a sad sad commentary on this society that the primary brouhaha is about a school indicating disapproval of underage sexual activity, albeit in an inappropriate way, rather than the girls behaving like little sluts (and the boys are no better, don't accuse me of sexism). What message is this sending? Not a good one. And where are the parents? Where's Child Services? I'm thinking some kids need to be taken away from their parents, or at least the parents should be fined for extremely poor parenting.
Schools are held responsible for teaching everything from reading to morals to anti-gun activism these days, but when they actually take a stand on something they're shot down by the ACLU. Lovely. Actually, I doubt the school was as concerned about morals as lawsuits, which makes the outcome of this story ironic, but still. They were trying, no matter the wrong intent.
In the olden days, wouldn't the school just have called the kids' parents? Did they think this was a better alternative? Or was the school so disheartened by past parental encounters over similar situation that they figured they had to step in and play nanny themselves?
Posted by kswygert at July 16, 2003 06:59 PM