UNREASONABLE

There's considerable difference of opinion on whether the drug- testing of
students is effective in reducing drug use.

But however effective, it is disturbing that the U.S. Supreme Court has
sanctioned the broader use of drug tests to include students engaged in
extracurricular activities beyond athletics, while opening the door to
testing of a school's entire student body.

The court, in a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, clearly
viewed drug testing as a valued weapon in the fight against drug use among
children. And in doing so it is prepared to sacrifice the Fourth
Amendment's protection "against unreasonable searches" to the greater good
of our children and society.

Does this really serve the greater good? Drug use among school-aged
children is an ongoing, serious problem in many areas, though far from all.
This newspaper would not for a moment want to trivialize its devastating
impact on individual students and their families, or suggest that it
requires anything less than society's full attention.

However, we need to ask ourselves how far we as citizens are prepared to go
in what has become an unrelenting chipping away at our constitutional
rights. What are we teaching our children about authoritarian rule,
invading people's privacy and this new concept in American law that one is
guilty until proven innocent?

To maintain a genuinely free and open society involves some measure of
risk, if only because we are humans, not automatons programmed by the
state. But increasingly it has become a disturbing signature of this
supposedly free country that everyone is placed under suspicion to protect
them against the few who really are breaking laws.

We understand and accept some of this in the context of the terrorist
threat that faces the country at the moment. But increasingly the same
concept is being applied to threats, while serious, that can be dealt with
in many ways other than eviscerating the basic civil liberties granted to
everyone under the Constitution.

Before the Fourth Amendment is permanently shredded on the trash heap of
history, citizens ought to read the rights they are in the process of
losing, herewith: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized."

If the Constitution is a "living document," the Fourth Amendment is in
desperate need of resuscitation, having taken one more blow to its heart
from its supposed protector of last resort.