CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DON'T STOP AT SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR

"Good afternoon, students, and welcome to the inaugural meeting of the John
Ashcroft Consolidated Union High School chess club.

"It's great to see that so many of you have turned out for this meeting.
We're going to have a great season, and I know that our team is going to
improve its record and finally beat our cross-town rivals at J. Edgar
Hoover Memorial High School this year.

"But before we get started, I would like to ask all the students sitting in
the third, fifth and seventh rows to please grab a plastic cup and follow
Mr. Jones or Ms. Smith to the restrooms down the hall.

"No big deal, we just need a specimen of your urine as part of our random
drug-testing program for all students who participate in extracurricular
activities.

"Oh, and each of you, not just the students who have been chosen for
testing, will have to sign a waiver and consent form to allow the district
to conduct further testing whenever it feels like it, to search your
purses, bookbags, jackets, cars and lockers for drugs or other contraband,
and to examine your personal belongings at will to see what you might be
reading or writing. You'll also be agreeing to submit to lie detector tests
whenever the school feels it's necessary, and to surveillance of your
activities 24 hours a day. You also may want to let your parents know that
your home telephone lines may be tapped, and that we'll be taking a look at
their activities and associations also.

"It's just our way of saying that we care, and ensuring that the students
who represent the JACUHS Bluenoses at home and on the road are the best
they can be ..."

Far-fetched scenario?

Maybe, and I admit, as usual, to exaggerating just the least little bit.

But if the U.S. Supreme Court follows the inclinations shown by its
questioning of the attorneys who appeared this week to argue a case
involving the random drug testing of high school students who participate
in school-sponsored activities, some variation of that scenario may quickly
become a reality at schools across the country.

But regardless of what the court's ruling may be, I think it's a lousy idea.

This is not because I am pro-drugs or because I am unaware or naive as to
the breadth and depth of the drug problems that impact our society at every
level.

But I think that even high school kids have a right to a degree of freedom
and of privacy and that random drug testing of kids who want to be in
French Club, sing in the chorus, or participate in Future Farmers of
America is just wrong.

It's a draconian, Big-Brother measure that assumes guilt in the absence of
any suspicion, and is like trying to kill a housefly with a hand grenade.

Not to mention that unless random drug testing is to include screening for
alcohol use - probably a practical impossibility - it completely misses
what has been the biggest drug abuse problem among high school students at
least since those dear dead days when I was a loud and proud Wheat Ridge
High School Farmer.

In addition, while the principle argument in favor of random drug testing
is that it will deter casual drug use by students, it seems to me that it
is equally likely to deter participation in extracurricular activities by
exactly those students who would be most likely to benefit from being
engaged in some type of purposeful supervised activity in their non-school
hours: Like, yo man, I know I can't pass no drug test, so let's blow off
the track team and go smoke us a blunt.

Schools undoubtedly have the right to protect their campuses as drug- free
zones, and to impose certain standards of behavior on students who are
actively involved in a school-related activity away from school grounds,
such as a class, club or team trip.

But do they have the right to monitor students' activities 24/7, even when
they are away from school, and to withhold certain privileges from them if
their out-of-school behavior doesn't completely conform, regardless of
whether it affects their performance as a student or representative of the
school?

Funny, I thought that was my job as a parent.

As a parent, I think that the court should be grounded and required to
attend after-court detention. In addition, I would require each of the
justices to write on the blackboard one hundred times (in their neatest
Palmer-method cursive) the relevant part of the Fourth Amendment: "The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

Class dismissed.