RED CREEK – The New York Civil Liberties Union has called on the Red Creek Central School District in upstate New York to publicly apologize to high school students subjected to illegal, humiliating and invasive searches by state police and school officials.

In a letter to Superintendent David Sholes, the NYCLU also urged the district to take steps to prevent invasive searches and protect students’ rights. Students subjected to the April 9 searches were passengers on a school bus parked outside of Red Creek High School. Every student was pulled off the bus and searched.

“This was one of the most humiliating moments of my life,” said 18-year-old graduating senior Stephanie Schultz, who is attending college in the fall. “My school taught me about the Constitution and about my rights, and then pushed them both aside and made me feel like my rights didn’t matter.”

Schultz and at least 17 other students on a Williamson BOCES school bus were removed from the bus in mixed gender pairs and ordered to the Red Creek High School principal’s office by a uniformed state trooper.  In the principal’s office, the students, male and female, were subjected to invasive searches in full view of each other.

Schultz was searched by a female librarian in front of three males – her principal, a police officer and a classmate. Though she asked that she be searched in a room without men, her request was denied. She cried as she was forced to roll down her waistband and expose part of her underwear and buttocks.

The male students were searched by Principal Noel Patterson as a state trooper watched. Female students were searched just a few feet away by a female school employee. Each student was ordered to remove their jacket, shoes and socks, and empty their pockets. Some students were “patted down,” others were asked to lift shirts and undershirts, and one student was asked to remove an outer pair of pants.

According to the district, each student was subjected to a “waistband search,” which in some cases entailed turning down the waistband to reveal parts of their underwear, buttocks and pelvic area, in view of male and female school staff and the male state trooper. Backpacks, purses and other containers were also searched. At least one student was charged criminally and suspended for a year.

The district covers the towns of Butler and Wolcott in Wayne County and the village of Fair Haven and parts of Victory, Sterling and Conquest in Cayuga County.