Neither Rushville High School nor Northwestern High School feels like prison. Both schools are modern and affluent and strikingly well-appointed, with friendly and good-humored administrators who seem to get along well with their fresh-faced student population. Those in charge don't seem to be authoritarians out to repress civil liberties; instead, they appear to be concerned adults who feel like they have to do everything they can to keep kids healthy and alive and safe.

Says Lyskowinski, "We're not out to discriminate against kids or beat their rights down, we just want them to do what they are supposed to do. We're not trying to catch anyone, we just want to keep the problems out of school."

But minor encroachments on the civil liberties of teens, "for their own good," can lead to more dangerous incursions on the civil liberties of all Americans, say critics of testing. Schools around the country already are imposing ever more draconian (and humiliating) drug testing programs on their students. In Maryland, 18 seniors were pulled from their final exams in the spring of 2000 and drug tested on the stage of their high school auditorium simply because of a student rumor that the kids had taken drugs at a party. That same year, in Lockney, Texas, the local public high school imposed random drug testing for all students; kids who failed or refused to take the test were initially told that they would be suspended and forced to pick up trash by the freeway in orange jumpsuits. And that's just the public high schools; private religious high schools get away with far more severe measures.

Widespread mandatory drug testing of all students, even if it is the wish of many high school administrators, is unlikely to catch on too fast, even if the Supreme Court opens the door to such programs. The reason: At roughly $25 per test per student, a school that randomly tests only 25 students every few weeks will spend thousands of dollars over the course of a semester. Public schools that need money for textbooks and teachers have a hard time justifying that kind of expenditure on pee cups and debatable effectiveness. In fact, Rushville already has had to cut back on its drug testing because the bills were mounting.

Still, a ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of drug testing will inevitably result in more such programs across the nation. ACLU drug policy lawyer Graham Boyd predicts, "A Supreme Court decision that endorses drug testing will plant the seeds of an idea among school boards that might not otherwise consider it." In Indiana alone, in the month since the Linkes lost their case before the state Supreme Court, drug testing companies such as Indiana Testing, Inc. report that business with high schools has doubled.

Ultimately, drug testing in high schools appears to have little to do with fact, and everything to do with panic. Faced with the threat of drug use, parents and administrators feel helpless. It is not hard to understand why they grasp at the most obvious solution, if only to demonstrate that they are doing something -- anything -- even if there's no proof that it works.

"If we can save even one life, it's worth it," said administrators at Indiana's drug testing schools; but they sidestep discussions of what might be lost in the process. Whatever they feel privately about threats to civil liberties, the school leaders are prepared to publicly defend their programs, regardless of cost or challenges about their efficacy. And they may soon be supported by the highest court in the land.

"It's a pride issue," says Northwestern student Kirton, perceptively. "You can never teach an angry person, and when you get to drug testing and these controversial topics, people get angry and it's no longer about the topic, it's about themselves. And when it's about themselves, they aren't ever willing to admit they are wrong."

This story has been corrected since its first publication.

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