WHY DRUG TESTING FOR THE CHOIR?

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld an Oklahoma school district policy that
requires students participating in any extracurricular activity to submit
to urinalysis testing for drugs and in the process opened the door to
random drug tests for more than half of America's 14 million high schoolers.

The high court upheld suspicionless searches conducted on secondary school
students who choose to broaden their educational experience by
participating in outside-the-classroom activities. While Justice Clarence
Thomas, writing for the majority, specifically said the court offered no
view on the wisdom of such a policy, he stated it is constitutional.

The 5-4 majority was mistaken. It is one thing to require tests for
athletes who could injure themselves or others if they are under the
influence of drugs, but to extend the policy to students about whom the
district has no reason to suspect drug use strikes us as an unreasonable
search under the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the dissenters, condemned the
policy as "capricious, even perverse: Petitioners' policy targets for
testing a student population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs
and their damaging effects."

We are well aware that drugs are a national scourge, but members of the
concert choir, the Future Farmers of America, the Math Club and the Honor
Society are least likely to be teenage drug addicts. Moreover, teenagers
using or tempted to use drugs, who could benefit so much from
extracurricular activities, would be effectively excluded from
participation if they knew they had to fill a cup.

Fortunately, few of America's 15,500 school districts have pursued such
policies. Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas high schools have not even
subjected student athletes to random drug tests, even though the court
approved such efforts in 1995. School officials told Tribune reporters they
expect no policy changes now.

And that's wise. Those students who, under no suspicion and as a matter of
principle, would refuse to take a drug test ought not be prevented from
participating in extracurricular activities provided for by school
districts to expand their educations beyond the classroom.

They are only teenagers once.