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.