The Fourth Amendment mandates that federal actors not subject individuals to unreasonable searches and seizures, allowing them to maintain their bodily, personal, and professional integrity (McCray 387). By incorporation, the Fourteenth Amendment extends the Fourth Amendment's edict to guarantee the same rights against state actors, state actors includes public school officials (McCray 387). When the public school requires the mandatory collection of urine or other body specimens in drug testing programs, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the programs constitute searches within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment (McCray 387-426). Therefore, random drug testing of student who participates in extracurricular activiti

es is with the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment protections.

Furthermore, since a school performs a custodial and tutelary role, it’s allowed to considerably more control over students than the government may use with respect to free adults. As part of their role, the school closely supervises students and enforces rules to maintain a proper learning environment. Consequently, the school inculcates manners of civility into its students, a central underlying principle that the Court has used in upholding drug-testing programs. In fulfilling its role, the public school exercises a significant degree of control over the freedom of the individual student. Students lack some of the basic rights of freedom that adults enjoy outside the school context. The school's restriction on students' freedom is thus a legitimate and appropriate function of the school.

In conclusion as society recognizes the need to restrain the drug problem in America, the Supreme Court has extended the “unreasonable search and seizure” clause of the Fourth Amendment to validate drug testing programs in schools. Mandatory, suspicion less drug testing programs may be constitutional if the school's interest is strong enough to override the student's individual privacy interests RESOURCE.

The facts of Vernonia school district case, as set forth by the Supreme Court's opinion, was particularly important because the Court relied heavily on the facts of this drug-testing controversy when it fashioned its decision (Roberts 191). In the 1980s, the Vernonia schools suffered a substantial increase in student drug use as well as a rise in disciplinary problems, suspensions and expulsions (Roberts 191). The school system provided special classes and speakers and also tried drug-sniffing canines to prevent student drug use, finally the school administrators determined students were in a state of rebellion and that disciplinary problems had achieved epidemic proportions (Roberts 191). Administrators believed the drug problem was pervasive throughout the general student population, and it appeared that the leaders of the drug cult

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