Missouri School to Cut Kids' Hair for Drug Test

Drug testing as a condition of employment is not mandatory.

It is for the companies that state that drug testing is mandatory before hiring.

You do not have to accept employment by any firm or agency that requires drug testing.

But... if you WANT to work at one that does, you must take the drug test. Correct ?

One agrees to the testing beforehand and it is therefore voluntary. See, now you are arguing in circles, and against yourself. These STUDENTS and their PARENTS ARE AGREEING to the testing BEFOREHAND, and it is therefore 'voluntary'.

These children, whose parents have determined that this is their school, do not have that option.

AH.... so it is the parent's fault, and not the students then. Perhaps those students should complain to their parents, instead of to the local ACLU , then.

They cannot simply not go to the school in which their parents have enrolled them.

They can go to the school, as long as they voluntarily accept random drug testing. Just like the employees of the school do. Or.... is the school violating the employee's rights as well ????

So, by extension of this line of thought, there are no protections under the Constitution and Bill of Rights for students attending a private university.

It is a high school, not a university, and these boys are minors until they reach 18. Since their parents sign off on an agreement for random drug testing (or will be doing so), It is only the PARENTS RIGHTS that would be at challenge, if the random drug testing were done WITHOUT their permission.

Let's say you were to send your child to a MILITARY ACADEMY.

Do you think the school administrators have the 'right' to search your child's LOCKER ? Do you think the admin would have the 'right' to submit your child to a random drug test ? How about a physical exam ?

Name one MILITARY ACADEMY where the school does NOT subject the student to such policies.

Perhaps when you were in the military , you told the DRILL INSTRUCTOR he could not legally search your FOOT LOCKER, due to the Constitution.

Did or WOULD that have worked out well for you ?

I didn’t pick apart your question that you asked. I listed a whole list of people that I said ought to be tested FIRST and as regularly as the students. Whether they are tested now or not is not the point. I said they all OUGHT to be tested before the kids. And as regularly as the kids.

If it’s important enough for the kids to be given tests requiring their DNA, then it’s equally important that those in charge and in close physical proximity to these kids to be tested as well.

I didn’t pick apart your question that you asked. I listed a whole list of people that I said ought to be tested FIRST and as regularly as the students. Whether they are tested now or not is not the point. I said they all OUGHT to be tested before the kids. And as regularly as the kids.

If it’s important enough for the kids to be given tests requiring their DNA, then it’s equally important that those in charge and in close physical proximity to these kids to be tested as well.

“Of course, they have probable cause and a warrant for each student, right? Right? KC parents need to unite and let these people have it. The USSC has already ruled that rights do not end when a student walks through the school house doors.”

Bingo. This sounds like a clear cut violation of 4th Amendment rights. You know the ones that are unalienable as in you cannot legally surrender them insomuch as they are bestowed upon a man by his creator not the state.

Also hair cutting for drug usage is used in spectral chromatography which can screen as far back as 6 months but cannot tell when the usage occurred nor for what reason. For example testing positive for opiates does not automatically mean illegal usage. It could have been for legitimate pain relief following dental surgery or injury.

I hope the school has good liability insurance because it sure looks like they are opening themselves up to legal problems and “It's for the good of the children” doesn't sound like a very good defense.

"Bingo. This sounds like a clear cut violation of 4th Amendment rights. You know the ones that are unalienable as in you cannot legally surrender them insomuch as they are bestowed upon a man by his creator not the state."

Indeed, many people here seem to think one forfeits one's rights (which is impossible, as they are inherent to one's person) simply because he is a minor or a student at a private school.

“The School is separate from the State. Rockhurst is not a public school. This is being done not because the 'state' wants it, but because the alma mater of the school want it.”

Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.
. . . . . anonymous poem, The Puritans’ Mistake, published by Oliver Ditson in 1844

It’s not entirely clear to me what you believe I “see,” but . . . for the record:

When Jefferson set out what was to become the basic structure of the American public education system, he had in mind six fundamental “objects” of what he regarded to be a primary education:
“1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
“2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing.
“3. To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
“4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
“5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment.
“6. And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.”

These are, I think, yet today what many people have in mind for their children when they consider their expectations of a primary education.

Of these, which (if any) do you suppose would rank of highest priority among politicians and bureaucrats for the achievement of their objectives? I suggest, none would (or even meet the approval of politicians and bureaucrats).

At the time “public” education did not exist, being a purely private matter, we can forgive Mr. Jefferson for not comprehending that, like religion, if left to the authorities of the State, education would ultimately come to be regarded by those authorities as merely a function of the State’s information ministry, and that its existence must necessarily serve the State’s objectives (that is, the intentions of the politicians and the bureaucrats whom we have so foolishly permitted to control our lives).

When dealing with the issues of what to teach and how to teach it, you will find that you must come to terms with the fact that “public” education ultimately amounts to government indoctrination. That we have so long escaped this fate is perhaps a testimony to the wonderful government, despite its faults, we once had, but the government of Mr. Jefferson’s time, when he so energetically endorsed a locally funded education, is not the government it has come to be in our lifetime. If government is to be in charge of education, then it will educate our children in what it wants them to know, and not necessarily what is in their own best interests to know. For example, see # 5 above: Government will not want us to know our rights; it will try to teach us to be obedient, and to not think too terribly much.

So let us understand with what we must deal. Government indoctrination centers will teach us what those who have day-to-day control of government, want taught. We know who has day-to-day control of government. If nothing else, our experience of the last thirty-four years (that is, since the Carter formation of the Education Department) should have taught us that.

“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind...because the forefathers did not trust government to separate the truth from the false.”
. . . . . Thomas v. Collins, 323US516, 1945

The foreclosure of “public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind . .”
For example, the prohibition of a government establishment of religion, or of a government proscription of the free exercise thereof, because we cannot “trust government to separate the truth from the false.”
With respect to religion, several hundred years’ experience of conflict made this obvious to Jefferson (and many another Founder). Jefferson did not see that the same dynamic would arise in a “state” education.

Neither, then, can we “trust government” to separate the truth from the false in the education of our children. If ever there ought be a ‘wall of separation’ let it be between government and society’s constituents, and let that wall be society itself.

What distinguishes Rockhurst from “public” education is what distinguishes all private education (including homeschooling): admission is not mandatory; attendance is not mandatory.

What has proven the annihilation of our Republic is the continuing growth of a ruling elite dedicated to an old order of government, which is much more to the advantage of its rulers than the structure of government devised by the Founders. This elite, composed of the men and women occupying seats of Federal power, is willing to betray the liberties of the people, believing they can purchase their acquiescence with free medical care and food stamps, for the sake of the power they can attain thereby. It would seem they have calculated accurately.

Let it not be misapprehended that the Judeo-Christian tradition stands “against” society. It stands against those elements of society who have concluded that, not being able to persuade society to their view, they must now resort to using government coercion in the realization of their ambitions.