CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ARE BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM STUDENTS AT SCHOOL

Dear Editor,

What is Mitchell County thinking? All the students at Mitchell High
must now check their constitutional rights at the door of the school?
Every time government encroaches on our civil liberties it is always
in the name of a "good cause." DSS and the DEA can suspend
constitutional rights in the name of the "child" and "a drug free"
country? Now, it is our local government in the disguise of concern
over drug use in public schools! This is socialism and communism, take
away the rights of all because of the supposed actions of a few.

Please wake up people! Your civil rights have been suspended by your
own representatives!

Check this out, by signing up to join a club, play a sport, or join
the band, one gives up ones right to the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution, that is the right to privacy and security against
unreasonable searches and seizures, the need to produce a search
warrant if there is reasonable cause.

This says, in effect, that if one wants to participate in any school
activity, then one must submit without due process, reasonable cause/a
search warrant, to a drug test. If one does not desire to consent to a
"random" drug test, without due process, then the implication is that
one cannot participate in any school activity, those who "willingly
volunteer" to join a club, ball team, band, etc. There is no choice
here! If you want to participate in an activity, the choice is to
agree to a drug test or not participate. In some circles this is
called coercion.

Since we are now "willingly volunteering" to join a club, play a
sport, or join the band, then we are "willingly agreeing" to submit to
the unlawful search, for drugs, without due process, reasonable cause
to suspect drug use and a warrant signed by a judge, and seizure, of
the blood/urine required to test for drug use even without reasonable
cause.

This has a twofold purpose. One, it sets us up to accept anything
that our government tells us is required, even though it steals our
constitutional rights.

Secondly, it prepares us to not resist anything that the government
tells us to do by taking away privileges if we refuse to give up our
rights.

I am not advocating drug use. I am advocating freedom from tyranny! Do
understand that this board did not come up with this plan on their
own. They have been told to adopt this "plan."

It is a fleece. If the county will tolerate mandatory drug testing in
order to insure a drug free school, what will they consent to next?
The school board has budgeted $5,000 for testing when there is already
a budget shortfall we are told. Only 110 students can be tested.

Now, let us reason together says the Bible. Most of the kids that are
in these activities are the kids that excel in the first place. They
are the kids that are serious about higher education and need these
activities to bolster their college profile.

Therefore, we are most likely testing the kids that are the least
likely to test positive. But wait, next year we can require that all
kids be tested! This is a constitutional issue, not a drug issue!
Mitchell County is suppose to be a freedom loving, fiscally and
morally conservative, Constitution-protecting county. But here they
come, taking the right to privacy and due process away from your own
children and we say, "Yes!"

Betsy Soler

Green Mountain