IN MASSACHUSETTS, EDUCATORS OFTEN SHY AWAY FROM TESTING

Many principals wish to protect students' privacy

For eight years, Joyce Kephart watched her two daughters leave the house
for Millbury High School with an unnerving thought: She no longer knew what
was going on in their lives.

It would have been an enormous relief, she said yesterday, if the school
had occasionally tested her daughters for drug use. "If it wasn't for the
school system informing me of things," Kephart said, "I would never have
known."

But Charlene Chinn, an 11th-grader at Belmont High, bridles at the very
thought of being tested by an administrator. "That's an invasion of
privacy," she said. Chinn is probably in luck.

Although the US Supreme Court yesterday broadened administrators' rights to
test teens for drug use, Massachusetts administrators have traditionally
shied away from the practice out of concern for students' civil liberties.
School officials interviewed yesterday said they could not recall any
instance of random drug testing in Massachusetts high schools - ever.

Principals said they had no intention of using the new right, and legal
activists said they would go to battle against any school district that
proposed it.

"I suspect if someone tries this, they would be immediately sued, and I
would be happy to do it myself," said Sarah Wunsch, a lawyer with the
Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's a really
sad day when kids get treated this way."

With today's ruling, schools around the country have the right to demand
urine or hair samples from any student participating in extracurricular
activities, even without evidence that they are using drugs.

Schools have had the right to demand that student athletes submit to drug
tests, but only about 5 percent of schools nationwide have exercised that
right, according to Lloyd Johnston, a researcher at the University of
Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court expanded the drug-testing right to include the
drama club, the chess club, the glee club, and every other extracurricular
activity, since those students compromise their right to privacy by
voluntarily representing the school, according to the decision.

The lawsuit had been brought by Lindsay Earls, a former Tecumseh, Okla.,
honor student who, as a condition of playing in the marching band, was led
to a restroom and forced to urinate into a plastic vial while three faculty
members stood outside the stall listening for "the normal noise of
urination," according to court documents.

Although the court did not address the larger question of whether schools
could test every student, several justices expressed an interest in
expanding the right still further.

But Massachusetts school administrators interviewed said they could not
imagine using such a right.

"Teachers do a lot of things, but I don't think they should be doing that,"
said Robert Weintraub, principal of Brookline High School, which refers
students to a testing agency if they have already violated a drug or
alcohol policy. "If you're snooping around on a kid like that, I think that
compromises the relationship."

Linda Nathan, principal of the Boston Arts Academy, agreed. "I've never
done a random search, and I can't imagine living in an environment where
that would happen," she said. In the past, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial
Court has guarded citizens from random testing.

In 1991, when the Boston Police Department initiated random drug testing,
the SJC ruled that the "general sense that there is a drug problem" did not
justify random testing of police officers, Wunsch said. "The US Supreme
Court appears willing to dispense with constitutional rights whenever
someone trots out some justification," she said. "This language suggests
that our state would not countenance such easy disregard for constitutional
rights."

For 18-year-old Jennifer Kephart, who graduated from Millbury High last
year, the compromise of privacy is an acceptable cost for becoming a
community role model. "It's becoming a big problem where the kids who are
being looked up to are overdosing on drugs or are getting into car
accidents because of alcohol," said Kephart.

But Matt Auger, 18, who was active in band and drama club at Brockton High,
said testing could turn into a kind of profiling. "There will be situations
where some students will be picked out over other students," he said. "I
don't know how they could do it fairly."