Opinion ID: 853224
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Consent to Searches and Already Regulated Activities

Text: Among the categories of students affected by the NSC program are those enrolled in some for-credit courses whose activities take place off school premises. The majority concludes that, because alternative for-credit assignments are available to take the place of the portion of the course that triggers the testing requirement, the decision whether to submit to testing is voluntary. But the effects of refusing to submit to drug testing in those courses may be quite harsh. Consider, for example, a member of the choir who hopes to enter a performing arts program in college. He or she is permitted, as the majority points out, to participate in alternative for-credit assignments, but is denied the opportunity to perform in public with the rest of the chorus. When the time comes to apply to the performing arts program, if that student refuses to participate in the voluntary program, he or she may be able to document a high grade in choir, but has a gaping void in performance experience. The majority identifies one set of for-credit coursework as compulsory regular classes, and describes participation in everything else voluntary. But the aspiring vocalist's appearance in public concerts is no more a voluntary activity than the future math major's electing calculus, when algebra will satisfy the high school diploma requirements. Cf. Trinidad Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Lopez, 963 P.2d 1095, 1109 (Colo.1998) (extra-curricular activities are a vital adjunct to the educational experience). That the student receives academic credit from the alternative program does not change the fact that the student is essentially given a different course from the one provided his or her peers, because of a voluntary decision not to take a drug test. I agree that participation in certain extra-curricular activities may open the door to some fashion of drug testing. Athletics have traditionally been the primary target of such programs. See, e.g., Vernonia (student-athletes subject to testing because they were the leaders of the drug culture and instigators of severe discipline problems). There may well be some basis for drug testing as a safety measure in activities accompanied by significant physical stress. I find far less tenable the notion that participation in non-athletic extracurriculars also opens the door to such an intrusive practice. There is nothing peculiar about National Honor Society, for instance, that suggests that its members must subject themselves, by virtue of their participation ... to regulations that further reduce their expectation of privacy. Joy v. Penn-Harris-Madison Sch. Corp., 212 F.3d 1052, 1063 (7th Cir.2000). As more fully developed in Part II.C, I believe that in order to be reasonable under all the circumstances, the scope of the testing program must bear some relation to the identified issue the program is meant to address. The NSC plan fails that test.