Prying eyes.

• Author: NAGOURNEY, ERIC
• Position: Examining student reactions to school drug and violence safeguards

FOCUS: School Fears About Drugs and Violence Prompt Crackdown on Teen Rights

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand how heightened concerns about school violence, drug abuse, and other disturbing behavior have created situations where students' rights have arguably been violated.

Discussion Questions:

* Do you believe that concern about illegal drug use and violence by students justify searching students, their lockers, and belongings?

* Should teachers and schools be held liable if a student who writes violent essays later acts violently?

* Suggest a way to investigate an apparently troubled student without violating his or her constitutionally protected rights to free speech and protection against unreasonable searches.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Role-play: Break the class into two groups, prosecutors and defense attorneys, for each side in the three cases profiled in this article, in each case, prosecutors argue for the school, defense for the students. Have each side respond to the following questions or statements:

* Could the "hex" be seen as a threat, something that is a violation of the law?

* Might a student's writing that describes violence actually be a cry for help?

* Information in the article clearly shows that the "hex" was a sarcastic joke.

* Shaun Joye is making a mountain out of a molehill. He would have had no reason not to take the drug test if he had not used drugs.

Discussion: After students present their arguments, ask them to take off their "attorneys' hats" for a moment to register their reactions to this statement, by Robert Weiner of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the administration of President Bill Clinton:

"The majority of kids support drug testing because it gives them an excuse to say `no' to drugs."

* Next, have each side respond to this scenario: Suppose Matthew Parent was a 30year-old artist, whose stream-of-consciousness "free writing" had been published in a literary magazine. What action might authorities have taken? How would each side define the line between free speech and due process, and the need to take action to prevent a possible threat?

Web Watch: For current news and background on students' rights, log onto www.aclu.org/issues/student/hmes.html

In the effort to make schools safe and drug-free, are authorities trampling on students' rights?

Thirty-two years ago, in a famous opinion upholding the rights of students to protest the Vietnam War, United States Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas wrote that young people do not "shed their constitutional rights at the school-house gate."

That's still true.

But these days, depending on where you go to school, before you can enjoy those rights you may well have to make your way through a metal detector at the gate, encounter drug-sniffing German shepherds in the hallways, let school officials search your locker, smile for the security cameras, and be ready to urinate into a cup on demand to be tested for drugs. As to free speech, say what you want, but if you mention acts of violence you may be history.

In most schools, of course, the picture is not that grim. But according to civil liberties groups, the rights of students are under siege as never before. Across the country, many school districts have adopted harsh "zero tolerance" policies, in which even thinking about an infraction can be grounds for punishment. And in the process, civil libertarians say, basic constitutional rights sometimes get trampled.

School officials are in a tough spot. They are charged not only with educating their students but also with ensuring their safety and maintaining an atmosphere where learning can take place. Incidents like the 1999 Columbine shootings have reminded them all too well that the failure to act against that rare student who gives warning signs, and then actually does commit an act of serious violence, could be deadly.

When the rights of students collide with the will of school officials, as is the case with the students on the following pages, it's up to the courts to decide where to draw the line. Their decisions in these cases could help determine where the line is drawn in your school.

THE TULSA WITCH TRIAL

A student is suspended for allegedly casting a hex on a teacher

During the Salem witch trials of the 1600's, women accused of being witches were sometimes tied up and tossed into the water. If they were guilty, the thinking went, they could use their dark powers to help them float. And if they sank to the bottom, they were innocent. Dead, yes, but at least with their reputations restored.

When Brandi Blackbear was accused of casting a hex on a teacher who had fallen ill, and was consequently suspended from her Tulsa, Oklahoma, junior high school in 1999, she called not on the supernatural for help but on...