Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, July 7, 1995 p707K2606
Students have every 'right' to get random tests for
drugs. (Originated from Knight-Ridder Newspapers)
Randy Brown.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1995 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News
Service
Warren Burger, the man who was chief justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court longer than any other in this century, died at
87.
The Supreme Court upheld a policy of random drug testing of
student athletes in an Oregon school district.
The stories are powerfully connected.
Mr. Burger headed the court during the years it took an activist
turn. He presided over decisions that established a woman's
right to have an abortion, that sanctioned school busing for
integration, that outlawed sex discrimination, that upheld
affirmative action.
But Mr. Burger was a conservative man who often disagreed
with the court's rulings. He was deeply concerned with the
American mania about individual ``rights.'' He worried about
the breakdown of law and order. He called for a ``reasonable
balance'' between the rights of society and the rights of the
individual.
Anticipating the ``rights'' madness of the 1990s, Mr. Burger
once said: ``A nation or a community which has no rules and
no laws is not a society but an anarchy in which no right, either
individual or collective, can survive.''
Thus, Mr. Burger would have been proud of the Supreme Court
just days after his passing.
Some background:
In 1989, the Oregon school district of Vernonia was in deep
trouble because of an outbreak of drug abuse and violence.
School officials had tried everything from anti-drug speakers
and seminars to drug-sniffing dogs. Finally they decided the
only way to send a strong message was with random
drug-testing. They limited it to athletes to try to avoid the kind
of lawsuit they eventually got slapped with.
This week the Supreme Court ruled that Vernonia's last-ditch
drug-fighting measures were constitutional. There were three
key parts of the decision.
First, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, athletes have a low
expectation of privacy in communal locker rooms: ``School
sports are not for the bashful.''
Second, the Oregon testing program was designed to be
unobtrusive.
Third, the program was an appropriate way for a school district
to fight drug abuse and was likely to work.
This, of course, has caused major moaning from the ``rights''
bunch that doesn't seem to care about the balance Mr. Burger
was seeking.
``Unfair and intrusive,'' they cry.
Baloney, I say.
As Scalia wrote, children do not have the ``fundamental rights
of self-determination.'' They don't even have the right to come
and go freely. They are subject to the control of their parents,
a responsibility that schools assume in loco parentis, as the
mouthpieces say.
Kids are subject to curfews. They can't vote, drive, work
full-time, drink or have sex until a certain age. Legally, anyway.
In short, it is no more unreasonable to test students for drugs
than it is to stop them from bringing guns to school.
This isn't about not ``trusting'' kids. It's about adults doing
smart things to help them.
And this is not bad for kids. It's good for kids, who'll face all
kinds of testing, drug and otherwise, out in the real world. The
lack of student ``rights'' is rooted in the desire, the necessity,
really to keep kids from the worst of life's problems until
they're equipped to handle them.
I prefer to think that many folks who are screaming about the
invasion of student ``rights'' haven't thought about the
consequences.
Forget for a minute the obvious and well-known evils of drug
abuse.
Student athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs tilt the
playing field. They win events and championships that your kid
ought to win.
And how would you feel if your kid was flattened and injured
by some steroid hulk in a rage? On or off the field?
Student athletes who use drugs just to get high are even more
dangerous.
They may not get the winning edge but they can and do cause
lots of pain to themselves and others. On and off the field.
And, right or wrong, student athletes often are role models for
other students.
Certainly, school districts have a compelling interest in actively
fighting drug use. And random drug testing is a good and
reasonable way to deal with student drug abuse, from booze to
the hard stuff.
In fact, drug testing in schools sends a strong and positive
message: that the adult world is really serious about fighting
drug abuse.
Who knows how much drug use comes to school? It might be
smart to try to find out.
The Supreme Court decision is, indeed, a reasonable balance
between individual rights and the rights of society. It also is a
real chance to stop some of the madness.
(Randy Brown is assistant editorial page editor for The Wichita
(Kan.) Eagle. ]