DRUG TESTS: THE REWARD FOR ALL-STARS

Chances are, most of you reading this were high school all-stars. You
were a member of stage band, chorus, the lacrosse team, the soccer
team, the basketball team, student council, environmental club, drama
club and Future Business Leaders of America. Or something like that.

You spent your evenings planning fundraisers in what had earlier in
the day served as science classrooms and you spent Saturday mornings
at the first practice of what would later turn into a double header
complete with grueling laps up and down the bleacher steps. And for
all of your efforts, you were considered one of the best and
brightest in your school and you were ultimately granted admission to
one of the best learning institutions in the world.

Those were the good old days. Now, participation in a slew of
activities may still yield college acceptances, but it also leads to
something less pleasant: a trip to the nurse's office where you are
forced to urinate into a cup. Formerly a practice only used with
athletes, and in a minority of schools at that, random drug testing
may now be extended to any student participating in an
extracurricular activity, from chorus to the physics club to the
Future Homemakers of America club.

The practice is already in effect in Independent School District No.
92 of Pottawatomie County, Okla., and its continuation depends on
whether it wins the lawsuit brought against it by a recent graduate
- -- now a student at Dartmouth College -- which is currently being
heard by the United States Supreme Court.

The Court upheld drug testing of athletes in an Oregon high school in
a 1995 case, and seems poised to act similarly in the current case,
which it sees as a parallel situation. But the assertion that the
current Oklahoma practice is merely a minor extension of the practice
of testing athletes is misguided, and sanctioning urine tests for all
students involved in activities would be a mistake with dire
consequences.

Whether or not one agrees with drug testing for high school athletes,
several facts regarding the decision in which it was upheld are
important to remember: First, the nature of athletics make the
consequences of drug use that much more severe. Performance-enhancing
drugs have long been a problem in the world of sports, and testing to
deter use in high schools reflects a practice accepted and used in
the adult world. In addition, the argument can be made that risks
associated with recreational drugs are increased when combined with
athletic activity, whereas the same can hardly be said for band
practice. After all, a little marijuana never did Louis Armstrong any
harm.

Secondly, the decision in the 1995 Oregon case stressed that the
school was using testing to address a severe drug problem that
centered around the school's athletes. Therefore, although the court
ultimately advocated random testing without suspicion in this case,
the decision was clearly influenced by the fact that the Oregon
school had some degree of probable cause before it infringed upon the
civil liberties of students. The concept of probable cause, or any
sort of trigger that demands a response like drug testing, is absent
from the current case, which advocates a policy of randomly testing
students merely because they involve themselves.

In fact, the idea of probable cause -- or even a school's
responsibility to address a problem -- seems turned on its head in
the Oklahoma case, considering that, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg
'54 has pointed out, those students more likely to engage in drug use
are precisely the ones who tend to stay away from extracurriculars.
By the very rationale of the school system, which says it has a duty
to deal with the problem of student drug use, it would be more
logical (though equally infringing on civil liberties) to test those
students who do not participate in school activities.

Contrary to current sentiments on the bench, this case does not
parallel the 1995 case, and the Oklahoma practice is not merely a
minor and reasonable extension of athlete drug testing.

But perhaps even more compelling than the faulty logic being used to
justify random testing of students involved in sports or clubs are
the horrendous social consequences that would ensue. What better to
further discourage kids already using drugs from getting involved in
productive activities -- activities that might decrease their drug
use -- than giving them urine tests based on extracurricular
involvement?

Allowing such a practice to stand would only push uninvolved
students, who regularly engage in questionable behavior and shy away
from school-related activities, to move further out onto the fringes.
And more than ever in this age of Columbine, when student alienation
poses perhaps the greatest threat to student well-being, deterrence
from involvement in school activities is horribly wrongheaded.
Encouraging the development of interests, forging mutual trust
between students and teachers as well as providing education -- not
using physically invasive breaches of civil liberties -- are part of
the solution to schools' problems, drug-related and otherwise.