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.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart