Different cities and towns have different safety concerns. In New York City, people have nightmares about terrorists crashing airliners into skyscrapers. In Tecumseh, Okla., the locals are gripped with fear that a drugged-out high school trombone player might whack someone with his instrument during marching-band practice.
I’m not kidding. That’s one of the reasons advanced by the local school district for drug-testing all kids who want to participate in extracurricular activities. You want to be a cheerleader, participate in debate or sing in the choir? Fine–but first, you’ll have to fill this little bottle.
What reason does the school offer for testing all kids in extracurricular activities for drugs? Safety, of course. Besides the risk posed by students in the band–performing “extremely precise routines with heavy equipment and instruments in close proximity to other students,” as the district puts it–a stoned member of the Future Farmers of America might let his billy goat get loose, with unpredictable consequences. The lawyers don’t dwell on the prospect of drug users infiltrating the Future Homemakers of America, but you can just imagine if some budding Martha Stewart on speed went berserk with a cheese grater.
This is one of those instances where it seems clear that the people in charge first decided what they wanted to do and then came up with excuses to justify their action. The high school in Tecumseh, after all, doesn’t exactly have a plague of addiction. During the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 school years, the district reports, more than 480 students were subjected to urinalysis, and only four tested positive for drugs–a rate of less than 1 percent.
Stretching to document the problem, the president of the board of education recalled the time he saw one band member offer some unidentified pills (methamphetamines? aspirin? vitamins?) to a fellow student. That was not last month, or last year. It was in the 1970s.
School officials resort to tortured logic for a simple reason: Public-school drug tests have to be squared with the U.S. Constitution, which forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures.” There is no dispute that making someone give a urine sample and then having it analyzed for drugs amounts to a search and seizure. The only question is whether it’s “unreasonable.”
The district has good reason to sound the alarm even though a lower court says it has “no measurable drug problem.” That’s because the last time the Supreme Court upheld student drug-testing, it emphasized that the program was reasonable because it addressed rampant drug use among athletes–the only students required to take the tests.
The existence of an epidemic was one of the reasons the court gave for going along. The other was that the test wasn’t an invasion of privacy because athletes–who shower and dress communally–have already given up their privacy. (“School sports,” announced Justice Antonin Scalia then, “are not for the bashful.”) Neither argument holds in the Tecumseh program, which tests far more kids. Choir members rarely get naked together, at least at choir events.
But there is no particular reason to think the court will preserve the limits it imposed before. When the Tecumseh case was argued Tuesday, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the skimpy number of positive tests didn’t mean there was no real problem–it could just mean the drug tests were a great deterrent.
The beauty of this argument is that it supports a drug-testing regime whether it nabs 90 percent of the students or 1 percent. Ninety percent? See, there’s a problem! One percent? See, it’s working!
Tecumseh teachers and administrators say they often see signs that kids are using drugs. That’s supposed to be an argument for mass drug testing. Actually, it’s an argument against mass drug testing. If drug use generates troublesome behavior, the school can simply test the kids who cause trouble. Instead, it insists on invading the privacy of students who have done nothing wrong.
Justice Scalia disagreed when an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer said school officials should test only the bad actors. “So long as you have a bunch of druggies who are orderly in class, the school can take no action,” he replied scornfully. “That’s what you want us to rule?”
The school insists that drug-users are causing disciplinary problems. But Scalia apparently thinks mass drug testing should be allowed even if all the drug users are models of comportment. Don’t think you’re fooling us with those straight A’s and that perfect attendance, young lady!
Those who want drug testing insist the evidence supports them, regardless of what the evidence says. We all know that drugs can damage the brains of people who use them. They seem to be having a similar effect on some people who don’t.
———-
E-mail: schapman@tribune.com
