Supreme Court Ruling on School Strip Searches - And What It Means

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that schools cannot strip search students, with Clarence Thomas as the lone dissenter. In the case, a 13 year old was accused of having ibuprofen by an ex-friend. Though the school never searched her locker or desk, they strip searched the girl. For ibuprofen.

Redding says she was then asked to strip down to her underwear and stood there while the nurse and secretary inspected her clothes and shoes.

"Then, you know, I thought they were going to let me put my clothes back on, but instead they asked me to pull out my bra and shake it, and the crotch on my underwear, too," Redding says.

Redding says her whole body was visible to the school administrators. She kept her head down so the nurse and the secretary couldn't see her fighting back tears.

I've already discussed why I feel that this was assault, so I won't go into that again. The ruling, however, was interesting.

Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter, asserting "that the majority’s finding second-guesses the measures that educators take to maintain discipline 'and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge.'" What's troubling here is two points:

• He seems to feel that there's something inherently wrong with second-guessing educators' decisions. Why? Isn't a wise to have someone double checking to make sure that people are doing the right thing?
• He believes that a strip search helps "ensure the health and safety" of students, when quite the opposite is true. This strip search was extremely detrimental to the health and safety of the girl. She felt abused - which is exactly what she was. In the rare cases when a strip search is necessary, call trained professionals: the police.

The other interesting aspect of the ruling was that only two justices felt that the school administrators should not be shielded from liability. It is no shock at all that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman, was one of those two.

Justice Ginsburg singled out the assistant principal, noting that he had made Savana sit on a chair outside his office for more than two hours in what Justice Ginsburg called a “humiliating situation” when the case was argued.

“At no point did he attempt to call her parent,” Justice Ginsburg wrote on Thursday. “Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity.”

Indeed. You don't need to know the law to know that the following is completely inappropriate: searching a child's panties for painkillers - but never, say, searching her locker or her desk - and never calling her parents. And then making the child sit outside the office even though they never found anything!

Unfortunately, only two of the seven judges could understand that the school administrators abused this girl.

This is why we need more women on the Supreme Court. Women will not only be more likely to understand issues like this, but through sharing their experiences, they can help men understand.

Proposition 8: How Wording Made All the Difference

In an upsetting - but expected ruling - the CA Supreme Court voted to uphold Proposition 8, which reads:

Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Wording like this would have been torn to shreds by my high school debate team (which once, rather infamously, defined Huckleberry Finn, in the statement "Episcopal Academy should ban Huckleberry Finn," as the character himself.  The team then argued that to ban a character, but not the book itself, is absurd.  They nearly won.).  But I disgress...

Proposition 8 was awkwardly written, and intentionally so.  Consider some intepretations:

• Only (marriage between a man and a woman) is valid or recognized in California.  Nothing else - nothing at all - is valid.
  
• (Only marriage) between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.  Of all legal or other agreements between a man and a woman, marriage is the only one that's valid.
• [No parenthetical equivalent] Pair "only" with "a man and a woman" to imply that no other marriages are valid.  This says nothing about other, non-marriage contracts.

Proposition 8 wants you, of course, to select the third option.  But should we?  Consider an analogy: "Only boys between the ages of 10 and 15 can apply."  

Common sense suggests that we parse the sentence as "Only (boys between the ages of 10 and 15) can apply."  Thus, no girls allowed.  Proposition 8, however, would have us pair "only" with "between the ages of 10 and 15" to imply that no other boys are able to apply.  This says nothing about other, non-boy applicants.  Girls are allowed, then?

Given the awkward, ambiguous wording, why didn't Proposition 8 say what it meant?  Why wasn't it written as "ban same-sex marriage" or "marriages between same-sex couples are not valid or recognized."?  Because wording matters.

Proposition 8 almost certainly would not have passed had it said what it meant: ban same-sex marriage.

From National Organization for Marriage's talking points:

Language to avoid at all costs: "Ban same-sex marriage." Our base loves this wording. So do supporters of SSM. They know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls. Don’t use it. Say we’re against “redefining marriage” or in favor or “marriage as the union of husband and wife” NEVER “banning same-sex marriage.”

52% of voters voted for Proposition 8; by NOM's own admission, only 42% would have voted for it had it been clearly written.  It should have been a resounding failure, not a narrow success.

So, please, do not let anyone tell you that "the people of California have spoken."  First, the voters spoke, not the people (voters do not accurately represent the people).  Second, the voters voted to support Prop 8, not to ban same-sex marriage.  There's a big difference - a 10 percentage point difference.

Wording matters.  It made all the difference in passing Proposition 8.

In Defense of Outsourcing

As I've mentioned before, I've started outsourcing. A lot. Most of the outsourcing goes to an (awesome) assistant in the Philippines, who does everything from online research to document editing. She's great, and she's quite literally changed my approach to working.

Although most people are merely intrigued by my hiring a remote assistant, a surprising number tell me that it's unethical, supplying one of these reasons:

Exploitation: "You're only hiring someone from because they're cheap. You're not even paying them minimum wage!"

While it's true that some people I hire are paid well below US minimum wage (you can find assistants for as little as $1.50 per hour, though mine are paid considerably more), it's hardly exploiting them. I do believe that employees should be paid a livable wage, but that means a livable wage for their country, not for the US.

It's surprising to me that so many people would complain about this, when we're all perfectly accustomed to salary adjustments based on cost of living. For example, Microsoft pays California employees 15% more for the same work than they do the Seattle employees. Likewise, they no doubt pay their India employees considerably less. Exploitative? Of course not.

Now, I'm not an expert in economics, but I would guess that, far from being exploitative, outsourcing is quite good for the target areas. You're providing the people with work. Doesn't that boost their economy? Isn't that good?

Protectionism: "What about the US? You should be hiring US workers!"

Most outsourcing-supporting respond with the following:
1) "By outsourcing to India / Philippines / another country, we can expand our company and eventually hire more Americans." I don't know in which cases this argument is true, but I can certainly say that it's been true in my case. The outsourced workers I've hired have been the reason that I've been able to generate revenue for CareerCup. It simply would not have been possible without them. This revenue, in turn, enables me to hire Americans for things that do need to be done in the US.
2) "Welcome to a global world. If you don't operate efficiently, your competitors - who may not be American - will simply out perform you." This is possibly the most compelling argument. A business has an obligation to its shareholders to operate efficiently. If it doesn't operate efficiently, another company will. And then, if that happens, how have we helped the US?

In addition to those two points, however, I'd like to make a third:
3) Why are Americans so important? Why is hiring an American inherently "better" (ethically speaking) than a hiring someone from India? Are we not all people? In fact, I could very well argue the opposite: supporting a person in a poorer country, whose children may struggle to eat or to get an education, is more ethical than hiring a comparatively wealthy American. (I'm not saying that that's true; I'm merely arguing that the reverse isn't necessarily true either.)

Suffice to say... I feel perfectly at easy with my decision to outsource. I've employed some extraordinarily talented people and rewarded them well for their work. I understand that there's an awful lot I don't understand about globalization, so perhaps someone will open my eyes to some horrible truths. Until that day, though, I will continue to use outsourced workers to build and expand new projects.

A Googly Peek into Racism

Racism is rampant. Maybe this election has made people less racist, maybe it hasn't. At the very least, I hope that it has made people realize that, yes, racism is still very much alive. As a quick illustration, check out the top 10 Google search suggestions for Obama: 30% are race-related issues: "birth certificate", "muslim" and "antichrist".

The most frustrating part is that people don't even see the racism and sexism. A Google coworker who had a "Hillary Nutcracker" displayed in his office window - he probably didn't think about how that's dripping with sexism. Nor did the Republican friend who asked online for one good thing that "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" has ever done. Nor does the other friend who asserts that Colin Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because he's black.

We don't see these things because we see them all too often. We've become immune to it. It's time that we wake up and call these things out for the racist, sexist acts that they are.

In Honor of the VP Debates...

Brought to you by Google's 2001 search index, a quick comparison to show just how new to the scene Sarah Palin is:

John McCain: 158,000 hits in 2001
Joe Biden: 3,240 hits in 2001
Barack Obama: 671 hits in 2001
Sarah Palin: 0 hits in 2001.

Despite being mayor of a small town, the internet had not even heard of her in 2001. I'm not sure if that says more about Palin or Google...