Calif. Panty Check Teacher Says She 'Vilified'

[alittlebitnumb]

Here's an interesting tidbit I came across on Yahoo:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A high school administrator who lifted the skirts of teen girls to make sure they were not wearing thong panties, infuriating parents and making national headlines, says her career has been destroyed because she tried to protect her students.


Rita Wilson, a vice principal at Rancho Bernardo High School in suburban San Diego who was placed on leave two weeks ago after parents demanded her resignation, defended her actions in a tearful interview with NBC San Diego TV news.

"This was a safety issue, it was not a choice of underwear issue, Wilson told the station. "And that's where there has been a misinterpretation."

Girls who attended the April 26 dance say Wilson and another teacher lifted their skirts in front of male classmates and police officers to make sure they were wearing "appropriate" underwear.

In some cases, girls said they were also made to partially undress if Wilson or the teacher suspected they were not wearing bras.

Wilson said she had been concerned because dances at Rancho Bernardo, in suburban San Diego, had become raunchier and girls with short skirts and thong panties were often left exposing themselves during so-called "freak" dances.

"I think that parents don't realize what school dances are like now," she said. "I think (they would) if they could see inside a dark gymnasium with 750 students simulating sex."

Wilson said her efforts to control the "freak" dancing in the dark, frantic environment of a school dance had been unsuccessful in the past, so she turned to making sure that the girls at least were not getting exposed.

"That's really what I wanted," she said. "If they were going to 'freak,' at least their bottoms were going to be covered. 'Freak' dancing is not a fun thing to watch all night. I've had employees who have been 'freaked' upon."

Wilson said that her actions that night had been mischaracterized in the press and wanted the parents who were calling for her to be fired to know that she was a "good person" who was trying to protect their children.

"I just want them to know I'm not what they've said in the press," she said. "I've been so vilified I can't believe it. It's been a lot of years working and my career is gone. And its devastating to me because it's a real part of who I was. I enjoyed it and I was able to do a lot of positive things."

Makes you wonder the real reason behind the checks....

[sumdumguy]

I wonder if they'll let me into one of them 'Freak' dances.. off to L.A. I go... w00t

[GreekGoddess]

So....they didn't check the guys to make sure they weren't freeballin'?

Hmmm...can I volunteer? *LOL*

[Remote_Access]

This teacher could of saved themself a law suit by ASKING the students instead of making them lift their skirts. *sigh* You'd think that a teacher would have a bit more common sense than that.

[Ouroboros]

How appalling. The destruction of privacy and personal responsibility is drawing near. It's sad.
It seems that there are not enough wrongdoers to justify the amount of watchdogs nowadays.

Now if I could only find someone or something to blame for this...

Ouroboros

[rcgreen]

Originally posted here by Ouroboros
How appalling. The destruction of privacy and personal responsibility is drawing near. It's sad.
It seems that there are not enough wrongdoers to justify the amount of watchdogs nowadays.

Now if I could only find someone or something to blame for this...

Ouroboros

Public hysteria has created a monster called

ZERO TOLERANCE

Those kids should boycott school until the adults come to
their senses. The teacher probably thought it was her
responsibility to check the girls' panties.
Perhaps she thought she would get into trouble if
she failed to "DO SOMETHING" about girls being
attacked at school.

You have to sympathize with teachers and principals
who are being given a mission to solve all the world's
problems by turning schools into experiments in
social change.

[valhallen]

heh my local *all gurls* high school has a school uniform which includes official school underwear.......have always wondered how the teachers checked if girls were wearing it or not

v_Ln

[Ouroboros]

I can understand the plight of educators and the like, but I would have assumed that they know where to draw the line. Certainly, teachers, and authority figures in general, are treated like crap by a disturbing majority of the youth (by age or by intellect), in stunning contrast to how things worked when I was younger (and that wasn't very long ago).

What the hell happened?

I sympathise, but don't condone such invasive (espically when they seem irrelevant, as this one does) actions. If this path continues, every school will have metal detectors (some already do, I know), X-Ray machines (yep, some already do), security cameras (yep), body cavity searches, blood tests, urine tests, psych evaluations, etc, etc...
Which, according to my limited foresight (as with others, I'm certain), will leave ALL of the "new generations" with a sense of BEING WATCHED...a sense of paranoia and a fear of 'Big Brother' that most of us only joke about. Hmmm...raising and educating our children in FEAR. Great.

I fear for both my step-daughter, and my unborn daughter. This upsets me, and makes me wonder...how can someone raised with the 'values' and 'respect' that I have mediate the actions of entities that either take them to the extreme or totally violate them, or both?

I'll figure it out.

Ouroboros

[psychosquee]

If you don't like to watch it, then don't.

If this type of behavior continues in our society today (the invasion of privacy by faculty, not the 'freak' dancing most of us know and love), I might just have to home school my children when I eventually get around to having them. Home schooliong with field trips...yay!

[cybermagellan]

Yes if this behavior is tolerated in public schools and private schools I might have to become a teacher :-D