My son has started running cross country and on monday he has to go for drug and alcohol testing. Its supposed to be random, but it sounded like the entire team needs to be tested. I don't think that it should be allowed. When I told my son this he didn't understand why I felt this way. He is only in 7th grade so when I tried to explain it to him I needed to think in simple terms.
I explained to him that in order for the police to search you or your home, they need to have a probable cause. I explained what this meant and told him, just because you are on a sports team, doesn't mean that the school has a probable cause for suspecting that you have taken drugs or used alcohol. We can't live in a world that allows the people in power to decide that they can investigate anyone they want for whatever they want. If they don't need a valid reason to suspect someone of breaking the law, this opens the door for them to decide to harass people based on their race or religion, or for that matter any reason that they take a hankering to. I know many people would say that this is a big jump from drug and alcohol testing done on athletes. I just don't see the connection between someone wanting to be on an extracurricular activity (they include all activities in this "random" testing) and assuming that they may need to be tested for drugs. It's just a sneaky way for the school to try to tackle the problem of drugs in the schools. As far as I am concerned its the wrong way.
The school says that extracurricular activities are a priviledge and that the kids don't have to be involved in them so its justified for them to do the testing. Sounds like a cockamaney justification to me!
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I think this is an extremely troubling trend, and am sort of worried about how to handle it myself (although we've got a few years to go before it becomes an issue).
One question that I would have for the school district is, is this a policy that applies to ALL extra-curricular programs, or just to sports? And if only sports, why is that?
landismom - at our school they test any student in ANY extracurricular activity. I don't know if they focus only on the athletes but may find out since my daughter will be joining the drama club. Somehow, it wouldn't make me feel any better.
I totally agree with you elise. It's a really bad trend, getting people used to the government demanding that kind of personal information for no legitimate reason based on no real cause...
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