HIDDEN LESSONS

Our name for him was "the principal of vice," an ancient wisecrack we
thought that we'd invented. He wore a funeral director's dark suit and tie,
but his shoes were brown sneakers with soft treads -- the better to creep
up on us, we figured. He liked to wrap an arm around our shoulders and ask
us, in a casual, jolly tone that masked the alertness of a customs agent,
how we were doing or what was up at home. We said nothing; one tiny
confession might lead to others. At last, perhaps after growing frustrated
with his failure to penetrate our ninth-grade demimonde, he dropped the big
one over the P.A. system, ruining his buddy act forever: "Schoolwide locker
check in 15 minutes! All students will go to their lockers and stand by."
Afterward, certain students grumbled about their "privacy" -- complaints
that made them seem guilty, at least to me. Me, I'd never felt I needed
privacy, perhaps because I'd always been granted it. The presumption of
innocence, until it's taken, isn't something most kids are aware of. It's
like air. But that was two decades ago; the searches were cruder then. I'm
not sure how I might react to the new versions. These days, the
public-school principals of vice can, on just as short notice, distribute
Dixie cups and send their charges to the lavatories. Once, only athletes
faced these random drug tests, but lately there has been a move in
scattered school districts to extend the chemical dragnet to anyone
involved in extracurricular activities, from debate to choir. The issue is
under review by the Supreme Court, and experts predict that it will rule in
favor of asking America's teenagers to prove their purity by unzipping at
the whim of school administrators.

If this happens, the results should raise some interesting questions,
particularly for middle-aged Americans who grew up immune to such
intrusions -- often to their abiding benefit, as they might never have
played varsity basketball, or even earned their diplomas, had things been
stricter. Indeed, it's fashionable now for former drug users, from media
stars to presidential candidates, to treat what they invariably call their
"youthful experimentation" as an understandable silly season that they're
wiser, more fully human, for having passed through. The acceptable level of
indulgence has never been quantified, and the statute of limitations never
spelled out, but a lot of adults now seem to feel that drug use, if it went
undetected and if it's in the past, constitutes a modern rite of passage
rather than grounds for expulsion from normal society.

The war stories of their children will be different. Some who might not
have been caught under the old regime almost surely will be under the new.
Certain scholarships and distinctions will go unclaimed by certain students
who might have won them handily. Certain field goals by certain players
will never be kicked. It could even be that certain presidential campaigns,
which under the current rules require confessions that the press and the
public can chew on and then forgive, will never get going in the first
place. Meanwhile, other kids will become masters of deceit and will brag
about their slyness when they get older ("Then there was the time I
smuggled in dog urine"). With their unspotted records, these accomplished
tricksters will most likely surpass their less evasive peers to become our
success stories, our leaders.

But most high-school students, I'll bet, will accept the inspections as
thoughtlessly as I did, and that's what troubles me. When I was a student
it was axiomatic that school was a training ground for citizenship in a
democratic society. Basic obedience was expected, sure, but we also voted
on this and that: homecoming kings (elected royalty -- how American!), the
design of new baseball uniforms and so on. It was all a game, but it had a
point: someday you'll be free of this depressing place and these will be
the rules. But what sort of rules will kids who have grown accustomed to
urological pop quizzes make -- or find themselves all too willing to abide by?

Random drug testing is a type of hazing, and having been hazed by the
principals of vice, these kids will want to haze others, I suspect. Tough
treatment tends to be passed on, often with pride and usually to one's
juniors. That's how it works. The children of zero tolerance may one day
advocate less-than-zero tolerance, whatever that will be. I don't want to know.

The teenagers of tomorrow may find out. There appears to be a logic to
locker searches -- they continually grow more thorough as the individuals
who have undergone them acquire the authority to conduct them. The cause of
the searches never disappears, though; all that's confiscated is the
innocence of the searched. The privacy I didn't know I had because I'd
always had it no longer exists, at least in public schools, but the drugs
are still there.

Some new ones, too. One substance that the testers could probably find a
lot of is Ritalin -- the amphetamine-related stimulant that some
public-school administrators practically mandate for unruly pupils. As the
growing use of Ritalin proves, school officials aren't against drugs
themselves, even those that substantially alter consciousness; they're
merely out to detect illegal drugs, which a cynical high-school debater
might define as any drugs that they don't dispense themselves.

But, really, what do I care? I'm home free. The principal of vice found
nothing on me. Was there something to find that day? I'll never tell. I
don't have to tell, but I pity the kids who do, even the innocent. The
innocent most of all.

Walter Kirn is the literary editor of GQ. His most recent book is "Up in
the Air," a novel.