Pubdate: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 Source: Herald-Sun, The (Durham, NC) Copyright: 2002 The Herald-Sun Contact: http://www.herald-sun.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1428 DRUG-TESTING DECISION: POWER TO TEST, POWER TO RUIN Some things are better left alone, and drug-testing high school students who participate in innocuous extracurricular activities such as cheerleading and chess would appear to be one of them. So why did the U.S. Supreme Court rule last week that the nation's 15,500 public school districts can impose random drug tests on Biff and Muffy even if administrators have no firm evidence that students are using contraband? The reason has more to do with reducing peer pressure than in actually nabbing students whose idea of high school is more high and less school. About 7 million high school students who participate in extracurricular activities may be affected by the 5-4 court ruling. As it sometimes does, the court majority stretched legal reasoning a long way to justify its decision. Basically, the court said, students who volunteer for extracurricular activities surrender a measure of privacy because they are representing their school. Similar reasoning was applied to a 1995 decision in which the Supreme Court authorized random drug testing of high school athletes. The court also justified its decision last week by saying order and discipline must take precedence over privacy rights in the nation's high schools. Most people would not argue with that position, though taken too far it could threaten civil liberties. Now that they have the authority to impose random drug testing on students in extracurricular activities, the nation's school districts have a commensurate responsibility to use this new power wisely. It is a power ripe for abuse, especially because drug testing has a checkered history of false positives. In fact, we would be more comfortable with the ruling if school administrators were required to get a judge's permission before conducting random drug testing, and then only when sufficient evidence of drug abuse in a high school is presented to justify this extraordinary step. The power to test is also the power to ruin. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart