School's Involvement With Drugs

Both of these cases clearly illustrate that students have little to no privacy from intrusive tests to prevent social problems. Drug testing should only be for a limited number of students that have been randomly sampled from all the different sports and activates not for illicit drugs but for performance enhancing drugs. Having a drug problem is a private issue that shouldn’t be brandished in front of the whole school. One thing that really struck me as ridiculous was in the Acton case when it said “Students became increasingly rude during class; outburst of profane language became common.” There are always going to be students that act out in class and this problem the school has to face shouldn’t be blamed on the national drug problem. In the Earl case the school tries to justify its drug testing by saying “Some of these clubs and activities require occasional off-campus travel and communal undress. All of them have their own rules and requirements for participating students that do not apply to the student body as a whole.” The school is trying to argue that with being an athlete, the student’s standards for privacy are already compromised but being an athlete myself I strongly disagree with this statement. The privacy of students shouldn’t be limited with more guideline because they want to participate in a school sanctioned activity. From the article from the ACLU we can see that as time goes by it seems as though the privacy of the students is shrinking faster and faster. With this new proposed law the Obama administration has effectively given the right of school administrators to find out very private things that shouldn’t be shared in the educational part of the child’s life. The next article about drug sniffing dogs being used more and more in eastern states begs the question is it right to take preventative measures to ensure students are not using drugs in school? Personally I believe anyone stupid enough to bring drugs to school should be punished. These drug sniffing dogs are just the next step to help prevent drug use in the school. The students should be punished for bringing drugs to school and not deterred from being on school extracurricular by being drug tested. The school has no right to keep a tap on a person and what they do outside of the class room.