SCHOOL IS WHERE FREEDOMS DIE

The Supreme Court is on the verge of surrendering another slice of freedom,
this time to the war on drugs. At oral arguments this week, a majority of
the justices seemed ready to permit mandatory drug tests for public school
students involved in extracurricular activities. Universal drug testing in
the schools may not be far behind.

Whatever gain that drug testing might offer to the fight against drugs is
not worth the loss of freedom, privacy and dignity. Mandatory drug tests
demean our children and send them a loud message: We don't trust you.

A mandatory drug test is a search. The Fourth Amendment, which protects
people's privacy, requires that all searches be "reasonable." Once that
meant that the police at least had to have a reason to suspect some one of
a crime. They had to have a warrant to search. But that freedom has been
sacrificed to the drug war. Previously, the court has decided that
mandatory drug tests are reasonable -- even without suspicion -- for
railroad engineers, customs agents and high school athletes.

The notion of a "reasonable suspicionless search" is a contradiction.
Searches can only be reasonable if they are based on suspicion or evidence.
But that's not the way the Supreme Court saw it in the high school athlete
case. It said that drug tests were reasonable because the school had a drug
problem and it was centered among the athletes.

Now the public schools in Pottawatomie, Okla., want to take that a step
further and extend the testing to other extracurricular activities such as
orchestra, choir, band and debate -- even when students in these programs
don't have demonstrated drug problems.

Lindsay Earls was a student in the Tecumseh High School choir in 1999 when
she was called out for her drug test. She described the humiliating
experience this way to The New York Times: "It was really tense, with each
girl in a stall, and a teacher we all knew outside listening for the sound
of urination." Earls passed the test, but felt that her privacy had been
violated and went to court.

The school district argues that after-school activities are not compulsory,
so students who object to drug tests can simply avoid them. That argument,
as Justice David H. Souter pointed out, is unrealistic for any student who
hopes to get into a good college.

President George W. Bush's Justice Department argued that the
voluntary-compulsory distinction doesn't matter, because mandatory drug
tests for all students would be constitutional, even for those who don't
choose extracurricular activities.

What a dreary future it will be if the nation's students come to associate
their education with a government that suspects them without reason and
invades their privacy without cause.