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Only the Mayor can get our kids drunk

Author:   Matt Deatherage  
Posted: 6/11/02; 6:22:37 PM
Topic: Only the Mayor can get our kids drunk
Msg #: 279 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next: 278/280
Reads: 2760

Tecumseh, Oklahoma, is a small town (population around 10,000) just southeast of Oklahoma City. It's been in the news for the past few years due to a paranoid student distrust policy that the town has defended all the way to the US Supreme Court. In 1999, Tecumseh decided that all students in grades 7-12 were subject to random drug testing if they participated in any extra-curricular activities. That includes band, drama clubs, the debate team -- all the stuff you're supposed to do to be a "well-rounded student." Courts have previously upheld random drug testing of athletes, but that was under special circumstances: the case that validated such searches was from an Oregon school district where the athletes were widely acknowledged as ringleaders of a student drug culture. The warrantless search (and that's what a random drug test is -- a search of your person with no suspicion that you have done anything wrong) was upheld because it was no more invasive a search than "any reasonable guardian and tutor might undertake." But in that case, the school had generalized suspicion of athletes as drug ringleaders. In Tecumseh, there's no suspicion that the band or choir is leading a drug culture -- the school just wants to test the kids to see if it's missing anything. There are tragically empty jail cells somewhere that could be filled with these kids if only they could be caught in those illegal acts the school knows they must be committing. A student named Lindsay Earls, now at Dartmouth, challenged the policy, losing in federal court in Oklahoma City but winning in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Tecumseh, unwilling even for a second to let its small population of minors be well-rounded without giving up privacy rights, took the case to the Supreme Court. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reported on the oral arguments back in March, saying the justices seemed unsympathetic to the idea that you have privacy rights in a public school you're required to attend:
Schools are, to quote Scalia, functionally "prisons. You can keep them after school if they haven't done their homework." In short, kids have no more rights in school than they'd have if their own parents wanted to drug-test them at the dinner table.
I bring up this relatively old story (though no decision had been rendered as of this writing) because Tecumseh apparently believes that it's OK for the kids to use alcohol on school grounds as long as the Mayor and the Alumni Association give it to them. In May, the Tecumseh Alumni Association held a party on school grounds, and they hired local police to provide security. At the party, two men gave beer to a minor (under 21, though age not specified), and the police noticed it and ticketed the minor for underage drinking. At that point, according to the police report and later news stories, Mayor Greg Wilson:
stood on the back of a truck with two kegs in it and shouted to the crowd, "Other alumni and I have purchased the beer and you are more than welcome to drink it. Keep on partying."
The mayor and another man were arrested and charged with four counts each of providing alcohol to minors, misdemeanors that carry up to four years in jail and $2000 in fines. What's more, since Wilson is president of the county bar association, he could be disbarred if convicted. One local TV news report quoted the police report saying Wilson had said that hiring police as security for the party "was the worst mistake we ever made." Wilson maintains he did nothing wrong, and disputes that the police report is accurate. So do a couple of his friends who say it didn't happen that way. The city council is backing Wilson, saying he's innocent until proven guilty. There are no plans to ask him to step aside or to mount a recall petition.
Let's briefly consider the blatant hypocrisy of Tecumseh's leaders. In Tecumseh, kids participating in extracurricular activities are so obviously latently criminal that they must have their bodily fluids searched at random. However, when the town's own police swear they saw the mayor giving alcohol to minors even after a warning, the immediate reaction of the town's leadership is to back the mayor. The kids trying to get the most out of school are guilty until proven innocent, but the mayor is innocent until proven guilty despite police officers witnessing the misconduct. A policy of randomly searching middle-school and high-school students involved in the Future Farmers of America is so vital to the town that it has to be taken all the way to the US Supreme Court, but the town's own alumni association serves alcohol on school grounds with minors present and is mostly upset that they were caught at it. Tecumseh told the US Supreme Court that it would like to randomly test all students for drugs, especially the stoners who don't participate in extracurricular activities, but thought that would be blatantly unconstitutional (though Justice Scalia disagreed) -- even though there is no evidence of any kind of rampant or latent drug problem in Tecumseh. When the mayor is seen giving alcohol to minors, though, the same town's leaders tell the local paper, "We have to go under the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. Lots of times, people jump the gun." Oh, like assuming all students have bad intentions but the mayor does not? Imagine what would have happened to a student caught on school grounds with beer during the school day, or even at night. Imagine that police officers spotted the student with the beer. How much trouble would he be in, caught with beer in a district that wants random drug tests of all students? But when the Mayor is witnessed by police doing the same thing, the town wants to look the other way. Maybe it's the elected officials who need the random drug and alcohol testing. Think the city would defend that before the US Supreme Court?
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