Judge Rules FDA Must Expand Young Women’s Plan B Access

March 24, 2009 in Civil Liberties, Gender, Health Care, Politics, Reproductive Freedom, Students, Youth | by | Leave a comment

Seventeen-year-olds will have open access to “Plan B” emergency contraception thanks to a judge’s ruling yesterday, and access for younger teens is likely to follow.

A federal court ruled yesterday that the Bush-era Food and Drug Administration relied on politics, not science, when it limited non-prescription sales of Plan B to women aged 18 and over. The court blasted the FDA’s “political considerations … and implausible justifications” in its consideration of Plan B.

The court directed the FDA to allow 17-year-olds access to non-prescription Plan B within 30 days, and to review its decision to require prescriptions for younger teens.

FERPA, Alcohol, and Student Privacy

March 24, 2009 in Administration, Alcohol, Civil Liberties, Dorms, Students | by | Leave a comment

An interesting article from the Kansas City Star on what colleges tell (and don’t tell) families about students’ underage drinking violations.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) limits what universities can do with information about students, but it gives campuses broad discretion in some areas. The Star explores the question of what universities do, and should, tell students’ families when a student violates drinking rules.

Supreme Court Will Hear Case of Strip-Searched Middle-Schooler

March 24, 2009 in Civil Liberties, Drug Policy, Litigation, Middle School, Students | by | Leave a comment

The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in the case of a 13-year-old eighth grader who was strip-searched in 2003 by school officials who were searching her for ibuprofen.

An appeals court ruled last year that the search violated Savana Redding’s constitutional rights, as well as “any known principle of human dignity,” but the ruling was a split decision. The Supreme Court will also be faced with the question of whether Redding has the right to sue the assistant principal who ordered the search.

Redding is now an undergraduate at Eastern Arizona College, majoring in psychology.

Just 5000 March in DC on Iraq War’s 6th Anniversary

March 23, 2009 in Politics, Student Power, Youth | by | Leave a comment

The sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War was marked  on Saturday by a 5000-person Washington march, smaller by an order of magnitude than the last antiwar march on DC two years ago.

Calling the protest “a congregation of the radical Left,” The Sitch examines the splintered state of antiwar organizing today, and explores the decision by liberal groups to sit this march out.

Quote of the Day.

March 23, 2009 in Civil Liberties, History, Quotes, Student Power, Students | by | Leave a comment

“Autonomy is hard for some people to understand. It is only possible to understand when you don’t have it.”

–Anonymous UC Berkeley student, circa 1969. (Quoted in Right On: A Documentary of Student Protest, by Maryl Levine and John Naisbitt.)

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

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