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OPINION
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be ficigan EhiI
Vol. XCIV, No. 32-S
94 Years of Editorial Freedom
Managed and Edited by Students at
The University of Michigan
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the
Daily Editorial Board
The Constitution applies
in schools, too
T HE JUSTICE Department recently
carried out part of President Reagan's
plan to eliminate an "epidemic" of crime in
the nation's schools by urging the Supreme
Court to grant school administrators sweeping
powers to search for drugs and weapons.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed this week,
the Justice Department sided with a New Jer-
sey school official who pawed through a 14-
year-old girl's purse after she had been ac-
cused of smoking cigarettes. The official
found the cigarettes, but kept digging and also
discovered marijuana. The principal then
called police.
The New Jersey Supreme Court correctly
ruled that the evidence the principal found
could not be used to bring drug charges again-
st the girl. Granting school administrators
such leeway to violate a student's civil rights
would be tantamount to declaring martial law
in the schools. In fact, if such tactics were
used against adults instead of minors, the
evidence would be immediately thrown out of
court.
While there may be a great discipline
problem in many schools, stripping students
of any vestige of civil rights is not the way to
approach the problem. The girl in the New
Jersey case was not even suspected of
carrying marijuana, but the principal con-
tinued searching anyway.
Granting school officials such sweeping
powers is a clear violation of the constitutional
ban on illegal searches and seizures. Simply
because the action takes place in a school does
not create an exemption to the constitutional
prohibition on searches without probable
cause.
There is certainly nothing wrong with in-
creasing security in a public school if con-
ditions warrant it, but it must be done in a
sane and rational manner. A student who is
disruptive-such as one who comes to school
drunk-should be immediately disciplined or
ordered to a drug rehabilitation center, but
searching students and their personal proper-
ty without probable cause is a clear violation
of students rights. It does violence to the prin-
ciples of law and justice which our schools
exist to promote.
Friday, August 3, 1984
The Michigan Daily
The case for Indianapolis'
pornography law
a
By Beulah Coughenour
INDIANAPOLIS- There has
been a great deal of national in-
terest in an Indianapolis ordinan-
ce which establishes por-
nography as a form of
discrimination on the basis of
sex. Because pornography is a
systematic practice of ex-
ploitation that sexually subor-
dinates women, it violates all
laws which guarantee civil
equality to all citizens.
The ordinance is based on the
idea-like the principle un-
derlying the Fourteenth Amen-
dment-that women have rights
which are abrogated by
systematic sexual subordination.
Pornography is systematic
sexual subordination.
Under the ordinance, por-
nography is defined as the
graphic sexually explicit subor-
dination of women, whether in
pictures or in words. The
material, in order to be por-
nography, must also include one
WASHINGTON, D.C.-For
most students, summer means a
time to relax, to make extra
money for the fall, to travel, and
to tan. A few Michigan students
remain in Ann Arbor to take
classes or just not to go home.
Fewer people yet leave the
streets of Ann Arbor, Southfield,
West Bloomfield, Long Island,
and Highland Park to seek their
fortunes as interns in the tumult
of Washington, D.C.
Why do we do it? Why do we
spend 40 hours a week working
for no pay? With no beach, not
many people we know, and a very
high cost of living. What is worse
than working for no pay is the op-
portunity cost of volunteer
working. It is as though we are
losing out twice: not earning
money and missing the oppor-
tunity to earn money. For most
interns, the shortage of money
means searching for happy hours
that serve food, for receptions,
and free lunches. Often times the
work is demanding and most of
the time interns do the same
work as salaried employees.
BUT WHY DO we do it?
Everyone talks about theex-
perience, making connections,
and rubbing elbows with the right
people. The truth is that ex-
perience means working hard.
Connections do not just magically
appear, and in all likelihood you
can get rubbed the wrong way.
With all these risks, Washington
is still teeming with interns.
There must be something that
keeps people here and keeps
them coming back.
An internship in Washington, or
anywhere for that matter, has to
be looked at as an investment. It
is a plan for the future. As an in-
tern, one has the golden oppor-
tunity to experience jobs and
of the following: sexual objects
who enjoy rape, pain, or
humiliation; sexual objects being
tied up, cut up, mutilated,
bruised, or physically hurt or
penetrated by objects or
animals; or sexual objects in
scenarios of degradation, injury,
abasement, torture, or shown as
filthy, inferior, bleeding, bruised,
or hurt in a context which makes
these conditions sexual. The or-
dinance clearly states that the
separating out of isolated
passages may not be used as a
charge against the sellers. This
definition describes the actual
abuses of women in pornography,
a $7-billion-a-year industry in the
United States, larger than the
conventional record and film in-
dustries combined.
It is supported by women from
differing philosophical
backgrounds who see one of the
most practical harms as the
silencing of women about attack
because of the difficulty of
receiving a fair trial. Studies
show pornography callouses
Fro-m
Wa shin goil:
Anode to
internships
By Andrew Hartman
possible careers that would
otherwise not be considered. It's
better for the future MBA student
to find out he hates business in
the summer of his junior year
than after he graduates and is
working for a Big Eight firm. It
is a boon to the future lawyer who
finds she is frustrated and
disillusioned with the criminal
justice system. The consumer
activist finds that he hates cut-
juries, preventing them from
perceiving the harm and
somehow tending to blame the
victim.
The ordinance is part of the
civil code, not the criminal code.
There is no state ban or police en-
forcement. It follows the
procedure for any civil rights
violation and requires judicial
review.
A suit has been filed against the
city by a coalition of publishers,
booksellers, and film distributors
claiming the city does not have
the right to regulate sexually ex-
plicit materials unless legally ob-
scene.
It is of interest that the
Supreme Court recently ruled
that child pornography, along
with libel and other harmful acts,
is not protected by the First
Amendment. .
Coughenour, a Republican
member of the Indianapolis
City Council, is a strong sup-
porter of the new Indianapolis
ordinance.
ting through all the red tape to do
the simplest things; the future
politician realizes that not
everyone is as committed as she
is. An internship is a cheap in-
vestment to find out what the
future holds. That is why so
many Wolverines choose to in-
tern.
Washington is teeming with in-
terns, it seems that most of them
are from the University of
Michigan. Their jobe range from
the private sector to consumer
advocacy groups; from
Congress to the White House to
the Department of Justice; from
the Democratic National Com-
mittee to the National Conser-
vative Political Action Commit-
tee. It amazes me that there are
so many people from the Univer-
sity here. On second thought, if
any university should be over-
represented, it makes sense that
it is the University of Michigan.
Hartman is a University
sophomore.
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