THE GIRL IS NOT A GUINEA PIG JOINING A TEAM

Or Being A Research Subject Shouldn't Strip Oakridge High Schooler Of Her
Civil Rights

Ginelle Weber deserves a trophy.

The young scholar-athlete from Oakridge won't get one for sports, since she
was kicked off her volleyball team for refusing to join a school-driven
drug research project. She should get one for character, standing up for
basic civil liberties when everyone told her to sit down.

Many schools nationwide give random drug tests to students involved in
sports -- an invasive practice bolstered by a highly questionable Supreme
Court ruling. Several Oregon high schools take this practice one step
further, freely sharing the lab results with a massive research project by
Oregon Health Sciences University.

At Oakridge, this is an interesting research project for the adults, and a
terrible civics lesson for the children.

Ginelle Weber decided last fall she did not want to be anyone's guinea pig.
She was an honor-roll student and good athlete, not a suspect. She wanted
to play sports, not pee in a cup for someone else's benefit. When she
refused to give consent, the school doled out a punishment worthy of a drug
user: Kicked off the team. Social ostracism. A nasty petition. Stern
lectures about the consequences of one's actions.

Weber's grades dropped. Friends drifted away. Today, she's homeschooled.
She and her parents still think she's right, and have sued the school for
violating her constitutional right to be free from suspicionless searches.

Good for them.

Authorities in Oakridge base their ability to give random drug tests to
student athletes on a 1995 Supreme Court ruling, which arose from a similar
Oregon lawsuit involving students in Vernonia. The high court said drug
tests for teams did not violate anyone's rights: The school's interest in
deterring drug use and maintaining discipline outweighed students' right to
avoid a search if they choose to play a sport.

We thought that was a pretty nonchalant view of students' rights then and
we still do. Participating in sports is indeed a privilege. So is driving
and other human pursuits. But partaking of these privileges shouldn't give
authorities license to treat people as guilty until proven innocent. What's
more, deterrence -- preventing something bad from happening -- is rarely a
good enough reason to strip away rights. If it were, we would not have any
left.

Particularly troubling about the Oakridge case is the intrusion by OHSU,
however well-intentioned. The $3.6 million study is designed to measure
whether random drug testing deters drug and alcohol use. That would be nice
to know. However, researchers are under tremendous pressure to keep
uncontrolled variables out of their experiment. All the little rabbits must
behave.

Weber has "undermined the entire program at that particular school or on
that team," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, the project's clearly displeased
principal investigator. "She is saying, 'I want to be different than you.' "

Last time we checked, that wasn't a crime.

Families in other communities have fought against drug testing, but Ginelle
Weber is doing it alone in Oakridge. She is 16 now. She is a brave young
woman who didn't ask to be brave.