EQUAL TIME: POLICY OFFERS REASONABLE WAY TO DETER STUDENTS' DRUG USE

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in a decision
last June upholding random drug testing for public school students
participating in extracurricular activities. Here are excerpts: A student's
privacy interest is limited in a public school environment where the state
is responsible for maintaining discipline, health and safety.

Schoolchildren are routinely required to submit to physical examinations
and vaccinations against disease. Securing order in the school environment
sometimes requires that students be subjected to greater controls than
those appropriate for adults.

Respondents [the Oklahoma high school students and their parents who sued
their school district over the drug testing policy) argue that because
children participating in nonathletic extracurricular activities are not
subject to regular physicals and communal undress, they have a stronger
expectation of privacy than [student athletes in another court case].

Students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities
voluntarily subject themselves to many of the same intrusions on their
privacy as do athletes. Some of these clubs and activities require
occasional off-campus travel and communal undress. All have their own rules
for participating students that do not apply to the student body as a whole.

This court has already articulated in detail the importance of the
governmental concern in preventing drug use by schoolchildren. . . . The
nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in
every school.

The school district in this case has presented specific evidence of drug
use. . . . Teachers testified that they had seen students who appeared to
be under the influence of drugs and that they had students speak openly
about using drugs. A drug dog found marijuana cigarettes near the school
parking lot.

Police officers once found drugs or drug paraphernalia in a car driven by a
Future Farmers of America member. And the school board president reported
that people in the community were calling the board to discuss the "drug
situation."

In upholding the constitutionality of the policy, we express no opinion of
its wisdom. Rather we hold only that [the school district's] policy is a
reasonable means of furthering the school district's important interest in
preventing and deterring drug use among its schoolchildren.