HOOSIER JUDGES ACE DRUG TEST

Memo to those who've praised or tarred Indiana as a bastion of conservatism:

The Indiana Court of Appeals just did its best to prove you right.

If conservative means common sense; if it means respect for privacy; if it
means recognition of due process; if it means championing the individual;
if it means not giving a fellow a bulldozer when he's done messed up with a
shovel, then Indiana and its constitution are by-thunder conservative as
represented in Monday's decision against random drug testing by schools.

And while we're at it, the American/Indiana Civil Liberties Union is
likewise conservative; but then, students of constitutionality and history
always suspected as much of the venerable organization that self-styled
conservatives seek to label as liberal, down to caricatures of its earnest
attorneys as guys with ponytails and earrings.

PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE

It's largely due to the ACLU's vigilance that guys can wear ponytails and
earrings in schools, and more power to 'em; but frankly, I'm not moved by
that strain of crusading. There are more pressing causes than making the
Montel Williams show.

Drug tests, on the other hand, cut to the heart of American principles of
justice and hang a Damoclean sword over those who refuse to forsake those
principles.

In the case at hand, sisters Rosa and Reena Linke, students last year at
Northwestern High School in northern Indiana, questioned whether their
participation in the National Honor Society and Fellowship of Christian
Athletes marked them as narcotics suspects who must share their bodily
fluids with educators-turned-cops.

Many so-called conservatives would side with the school, of course,
accepting investigative intrusion into the affairs of a Christian athlete
while howling in protest when that athlete is forbidden from proselytizing
his classmates at a mandatory assembly.

The school system used the various rationalizations that have worked at the
federal court level but failed to impress Hoosier judges: that standout
students have a special obligation to prove they're clean, that
extracurricular activities are a privilege not earned by achievement, and
that nobody who's not guilty has anything to worry about.

Oh, and that taking urine samples from the exemplary students will help get
students in general off drugs.

Setting aside the not-rare occurrence of false positives, I have always
failed to find any daylight at the end of this trail of logic. So did the
Linke sisters; but in the end, they had to give in. As Rosa, now a college
student, pointed out, the extracurriculars dangled over kids as a bonus are
in fact a necessity in the competition for higher education.

"Schools put a stipulation on students by saying in order to make yourself
the kind of person who can get into college and get a scholarship you have
to submit to a random drug test," she said. "I have the right to take the
position that I will not pee in a cup for them."

Too late for her dignity and liberty, but in time for her younger sister's,
the appeals court agreed that institutions have no right to search somebody
for drugs without cause to suspect actual drug use. It's a time-honored
concept that used to apply in the adult world, until workplace drug-testing
emerged as an industry.

PROUD TO BE A HOOSIER

The appeals court noted that our state constitution is tougher on the
forces of power than is the federal one; which makes me as proud to be a
Hoosier as I was on the night George McGinnis scored 52 points against the
Kentucky All-Stars. And he did it without peeing in a cup beforehand.

Today, as athletes and honor students must relieve themselves to satisfy
the authorities, should parents feel relieved? There's no quantitative
evidence they should. When the best citizens are the objects of
investigation, crime statistics ought to look good.

A national drug testing advocate railed after Monday's ruling that
extracurriculars "are not a privilege for people who break the law and come
to school stoned." She should concern herself with people who come to
school stoned. They can be spotted. They can be disciplined and helped. The
rest of the kids are spending way too much time in the restroom,
conservatively speaking.