When SESP instructor Cindy Conlon learned that the Supreme Court would hear the Savana Redding case this spring, she immediately revised her syllabus to make it the focus of her spring quarter class, Supreme Court Seminar. And she promptly made plans for her students to travel to Washington, D.C., to observe the case at the Supreme Court.
Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding has been in the courts since 2003, when school officials strip-searched then-13-year-old Savana Redding for drugs. A friend of hers had been found with prescription-strength ibuprofen and said she had gotten it from Redding. The case has been the focus of much attention recently, ranging from an article in the New York Times to a segment on Colbert Report.
On April 21, Conlon and nine of her students saw the oral argument before the Supreme Court in the case, which focuses on whether school officials violated Redding's Fourth Amendment constitutional rights. "The Supreme Court has not decided a case on this issue since 1985 and now must balance the administrators' interest in keeping the school drug-free against the privacy rights of individual students," says Conlon.
In Social Policy 351, Conlon's students followed the case in real time, reading the briefs for both sides. In addition, after the trip to Washington on May 4 the class had a telephone conference with Adam Wolf, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney who argued for Redding against the Safford School District. Wolf debriefed the argument and made predictions as to how the case might be decided. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the case by the end of June.
During their visit to Washington, the SESP students also visited the National School Boards Association to discuss the case with the attorney who wrote the organization's amicus brief, written as a friend of the court. At the Supreme Court, Conlon's students were guests of the head librarian, Judith Gaskell, and were even able to see the basketball court on the fourth floor of the building. "We had a private tour and stood at the lectern in the courtroom. … Quite a trip!" says Conlon.
Read the Daily Northwestern article with student comments.
Photo, left to right:
Sarah Kaplan, Sara Kalish, Julie Karaba, Scott Belsky, instructor Cindy Conlon, Adam Wolf (the ACLU attorney who argued for Savana Redding), Stefani Weiss, Tatiana Rostovtseva, Katie Ressmeyer, Parv Santhosh-Kumar and Matti Fieweger