COURT'S MESSAGE TO STUDENTS: JUST SAY NO TO THE CHESS CLUB

Extracurricular Activities Become A Drug-Test Trap.

In a decision Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court spoke directly to children
who are interested in experimenting with drugs. The message is clear and
simple: Focus all of your attention on drugs or face expulsion.

This curious message is the product of a 5-4 ruling in Board of Education
vs. Earls, in which the court upheld the right of high schools to compel
drug testing of any student interested in extracurricular activities
without any showing of individual suspicion of drug use. The decision by
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas upholding such "suspicionless" testing
ensures that every child experimenting with drugs will now choose between
making drugs their exclusive interest and going drug-free with the chess club.

Although the court once insisted that children "do not shed their
constitutional rights ... at the schoolhouse gate," the relative rights of
children are vastly different within the school. Past cases focused on
lockers and speech. However, in a 1995 case out of Vernonia, Ore., the
court extended its school rulings to physical searches and allowed
suspicionless drug testing of student athletes. This ruling was based in
part on the obvious physical danger of students playing sports while on
drugs. The image of some coked-up student diving the wrong way off a high
board was enough for the court. Moreover, the court stressed that the
school was facing an "epidemic" of drugs and that athletes were the natural
leaders of the "drug culture."

In the current case, the officials at the Pottawatomie school district in
Tecumseh, Okla., did not find this nearly broad enough. The school decided
to test all students engaged in extracurricular activities, including
strictly nonsports activities ranging from yearbook staff to the academic team.

Of course, it is hard to imagine the danger of a high school student in
such nonathletic activities. While the chess coach may be suspicious as to
why Junior used the Queen's Gambit as an opening move, the opposing player
is probably safe from immediate harm.

Moreover, where the Vernonia school documented a student population in "a
state of rebellion ... fueled by alcohol and drug abuse," Tecumseh school
officials testified that only three high school students out of a class of
243 tested positive for drugs in a two-year period. Notably, all three
played sports.

Justice Thomas, however, removed these factors as prerequisites for
suspicionless testing for high schools across the country. While the court
repeated its privacy concern over "an excretory function," it found drug
testing to not be intrusive at the school. The court noted that a teacher
can require all students to reveal what prescriptions they are taking and
then stand outside a stall to "listen for the normal sounds of
urination"--each student is expected to make such normal sounds to the
satisfaction of the teacher. Abnormal-sounding students apparently face
repeated testing.

In her concurrence, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that this new ruling
was not so bad because students can simply decline to participate in any
extracurricular activities. It is the dream of every high school deadhead:
Just say no to extracurricular activities. The decision will now free up
time for an exclusive commitment to the drug culture and build peer
identification with those pledging to live "activity-free."

It is often said that we learn to be citizens in high school. With
decisions like Earls, it is not hard to imagine the lessons of citizenship
being taught to our children. If our schools become a learning ground for
personal submission and collective monitoring, our children will replicate
these lessons as citizens. The increasing levels of surveillance and
monitoring in our lives have created a type of fish-bowl society that would
have been unthinkable a generation ago. As the "expectation of privacy"
declines further with this new generation, we may find that the exceptions
allowed for schools today become the rule for society tomorrow.