Bill of Rights reserved for graduates

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By Barb Ickes | Saturday, November 3, 2007 11:15 PM CDT | () comments

If safety and well-being truly were the issues here, teachers would be drug tested, too.

But everybody knows adults have rights and kids don’t.

The Fourth Amendment — the one that protects the rest of us from illegal search and seizure — doesn’t apply to those enrolled over the past two weeks at Rockridge High School and Junior High.

Students at the Taylor Ridge, Ill., schools have been subjected to random drug testing since mid-October.

The kids don’t have to do a single thing wrong in order for school officials to demand an inventory of their urine. The adults don’t even have to suspect the kids are doing something illegal. Simply being enrolled at Rockridge is enough.

The fourth Amendment guarantees, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons …”

But these young people have no such right. They surrendered it when their parents signed them up for school.

And now let us commence with the arguments.

The first one goes like this: If your kid isn’t doing drugs, he has nothing to hide. Good parents should want to know if their kids are using drugs. And my kid has the right to go to a safe school and not share a classroom with your kid who may be stoned.

The problem here is that it ignores the aforementioned constitutional right, which includes the doctrine of probable cause. Besides, if you’re so keen on testing your kid, you shell out the 98 bucks to do it.

Most of us agreed to pay taxes for education at our schools — not urine tests.

There is no doubt in my mind that Superintendent Jack Bambrick is trying to do the right thing. But to say the random drug tests are “not a program to catch people” is insincere. The raw intent may be to discover and help kids with an abuse problem, but make no mistake — you have to catch them first.

Striking from another angle in this debate is a collection of parents who say they’re uncomfortable with the testing because kids would be “labeled” if they turned up a positive test. But labeled by whom?

Surely these parents do not believe a positive test would be news to the other students? Surely most of the kids know who gets high and who steals their dads’ beer on the weekends.

Here’s another rub: School officials regularly and legitimately complain that they’re sick of raising other people’s children. They want to be teachers — not parents or police.

But drug testing of children most certainly should fall within parental realms, not public ones. If school officials do not wish to be parents to hundreds of students, they shouldn’t create a way to do so.

If parents have a reason to believe their kid is doing something he or she shouldn’t, the parents should have them tested — out of love and concern. By letting the school do it, they are sending the message to children that authorities are always correct.

And that’s precisely how the Catholic Church got into trouble.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.