Negative Case: Camp 1998

The nurse walks in and calls your name and several other athletes for a random drug test. She starts asking you questions about your medical history, and you feel that these are private issues that shouldn't have to be shared. You are then asked to give a urine test for drug use. You are humiliated as your individual human rights are taken away. Because of this distinctive display of violation of individual rights, I must strongly negate the resolution which states Resolved: That the random testing of student athletes for illegal drug use is justified.

My value is that of Individual rights. Individual rights are basically privacy, dignity, and self esteem. All of these are violated in one way or another by random drug testing.

My criterion in today's debate will be that of deontology. It is defined by Morris Engel as any theory that evaluates the rightness or wrongness of proposed actions in accordance with whether or not they conform to certain principals one feels bound to obey or follow regardless of their consequences.

I will negate today's resolution with two contentions: There is no just cause for random drug testing and random drug testing violates a student's right to privacy.

Let's first direct our attention to Contention One: There is no just cause for random drug testing.
A good example is police officers are not allowed to pull over random cars and search them. However, unlike the police, school officials test student athletes just because they are athletes. Also, there hasn't been any proof that most drug users are athletes. This is just a mass unreasonable search. In Justice O' Connor's words, "A mass suspicionless search is altogether greatly unreasonable." They just randomly pick athletes for no good reason. This violates the fourth amendment which states that there are not to be any unreasonable search and seizures. In random drug testing, athletes are assumed guilty until proven innocent.

Let's now move our attention to Contention Two: Random drug testing violates a student's right to privacy.
One very important individual right, the right to privacy, is extremely violated when random drug testing is put into action. Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez states, "Children are compelled to attend school, but nothing suggests that they lose their right to privacy in their excretory functions when they do so." This shows how an individual's right to privacy can be taken away in an instant. Not only is privacy hurt by the supervision of drug tests, but also in deeper depth by the need of medical records to be released. Kathleen M. Kowalsky writing for Current Health states, "To avoid confusion, test subjects are often asked to list medications they're using. But proving this alibi could pose other dilemmas, such as revealing contraceptive use or private medical information. This shows that even more individual rights are being taken away. Most people think urine tests aren't really that bad and do not intrude on privacy, but as Justice Scalia explains, "State monitored collection and testing of urine, while perhaps not the most intrusive of searches, is still particularly destructive of privacy." Clearly you can see the destructive power of random drug testing.

I am now open for cross examination.