Flushing our children's privacy

A Houston-area school district just got an enormous amount of money to implement district-wide random drug testing on its students. According to click2houston.com, the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, which enrolls 87,000 students, got nearly $1 Million in Department of Education grant money, the largest of 55 similar grants in the nation. It should be noted that this isn't just in sports. This includes all extracurricular activities, including things like band, academic clubs and 4-H. If you want to do something other than simply attend class, you have to take a test.Yes, the US Supreme Court's 2002 ruling says that school districts do have the right to require these tests, since extracurricular activities are elective, but one wonders whether this is a right worth exercising.

This is not by any means the first time something like this has happened, but this is the biggest one yet.

"Texas has always been at the forefront," said Roy Garcia, assistant superintendent for secondary school administration in the Cypress-Fairbanks district. "It will be a positive way for students to find yet another reason to simply say 'No."'

People in support of this measure seem to think that this will give kids an excuse not to give in to peer pressure. "I've got to take a drug test for sports, so I can't." They must think kids are pretty dumb, too, to go in for that. If given a test at the beginning of a season, any kid knows they've got the rest of the season when they aren't being tested to indulge. They also know that if you lay off for a while, your body will get rid of what would show up. And these tests don't necessarily show everything anyway. Unless a student has drunk alcohol in the last few hours, for example, it won't show up on a test; things like LSD and Ecstasy are difficult if not impossible to detect unless the student is currently under the influence. I guess the assumption is that once a kid has to face the reality of a drug test, s/he will stop wanting to experiment. Bullshit. A kid who likes drugs is going to learn how to beat the test, plain and simple.

I have to interject at this point. The idea of Random Drug Testing is a lie. There is no such thing as random drug testing, because the tests cost too much to administer completely at random. They don't test you unless they think they have a reasonable chance of finding something to justify the expense. Cypress-Fairbanks is planning on testing about 40% of its 11,500 high school students who participate in extracurricular activities. Hmm, 4600 students sounds like a pretty focused group to me.

In the neighboring town of Tomball last week, the school board approved random drug testing for extracurricular students as well. Responding to concerns from parents, the board officials have stressed that the results won't be part of students' permanent records.

Yes, it's legal to do this. I'm not arguing that fact, but the idea that these tests can be required of any student at any time amounts to an invasion of privacy. Besides, under the aegis of "random" testing, they will mostly be targeting certain students who appear under the influence from time to time. Will they catch some students? Sure. But they may also embarrass themselves by testing a lot of students negative and spending lots of taxpayer money to do it.

Another issue raised is where this information will go. Suppose, for example, a student is undergoing treatment for depression and is taking medication. This also shows up on a drug test, when the student and student's family may feel it's none of the school's business to know. Drug tests may reveal things about students that the students are not normally obligated to share, and will force the issue and "let the cat out of the bag," so to speak. It's impossible to deny information like that, even if the school looks the other way, once it has come up in the first place.

Many adults have fought pre-employment drug screens on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. I just hope that kids can do the same. Making private information public doesn't do anyone any real good.