Pubdate: Sat, 06 Jul 2002
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2002 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact:  http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863
Author: David Sarasohn
Note: Sarasohn is an associate editor at The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He 
can be contacted at  http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SCHOOL SPIRIT CAN'T BE MEASURED IN SPECIMEN JAR

Next to fireworks, and fireworks accidents, nothing says Fourth of July 
more than a high school band. Some trombones, some John Philip Sousa - 
maybe enough to drown out the speeches - and some kids getting some more 
exposure to the powerful ideals for which the nation stands.

... As long, of course, as the band members don't get the idea that the 
ideals apply to them.

Just in time for the Fourth, the Supreme Court has ruled, 5-4, that schools 
can do drug testing on any and all students who want to participate in 
extracurricular activities - even if the individual students involved seem 
no more wigged-out than the average shop teacher. The court decision 
cheerfully calls this approach "suspicionless drug testing."

The court's decision, in a case from Tecumseh, Okla., is based heavily on a 
previous decision in an Oregon case finding that schools could test any 
student on school athletic teams. That decision was based at least in part 
on safety issues affecting other students, and the dangers of a zonked-out 
linebacker, or dilated pupils swinging a lacrosse stick. But the current 
decision, written by Clarence Thomas, just concludes breezily that "the 
safety interest furthered by drug testing is undoubtedly substantial for 
all children, athletes and nonathletes alike."

Besides, "Police officers once found drugs or drug paraphernalia in a car 
driven by a Future Farmers of America member," and the FFA often works with 
animals that could be dangerous.

In other words, drugs are bad, testing might help, so let's test the reed 
section - even if every member looks as straight as an oboe. They're 
students, and it's not like they have rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the dissent, said of the safety argument, 
"Notwithstanding nightmarish images of out-of-control flatware, livestock 
run amok, and colliding tubas disturbing the peace and quiet of Tecumseh, 
the great majority of students the school district seeks to test in truth 
are engaged in activities that are not safety-sensitive to an unusual degree."

In fact, wrote Ginsburg, the program would focus on the least risky kids, 
and scare away from school activities the most troubled ones: "The 
particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is 
capricious, even perverse: Petitioners' policy targets for testing a school 
population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs and their damaging 
effects."

And schools soon may not need to pick out any group at all.

"I'm afraid in a few years, there will be no limits on drug testing of 
students," warns Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Foundation's 
Project on Criminal Justice. "Pretty soon, students will have no choice at 
all. If they're in school, they have to submit to drug testing."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, notes Lynch, says that in some ways, federal 
prisoners have more rights than public school students.

We need to treat students this way, the court majority rules, because we're 
in a desperate epidemic of drug use, and anything goes. But according to 
the National Institute of Drug Abuse, drug use among teen-agers has 
actually fallen since 1975.

"These kids are acting better and we're treating them worse," argues 
Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 
in Washington, D.C. "And now we're telling them we're going to drug-test 
them to sing in the choir."

Normally, Schiraldi points out, courts balance the public good with 
citizens' liberty interests.

"Now, we tell these young people ... that they have no liberty interests," 
he says. "That is the lesson they get, and believe me, it is not lost on them."

Nor on Justice Ginsburg.

"The government is nowhere more a teacher than when it runs a public 
school," she wrote. "... Schools' tutelary obligations to their students 
require them to "teach by example' by avoiding symbolic measures that 
diminish constitutional protections."

This July 4, as we hail the rights and rules that deserve all our 
fireworks, we'll still have the freshmen on French horn and the sophomores 
on sax.

But if there's a flat note, it won't be coming from the band.
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