Drug Testing, Strip Searches, and School Officials. The Constitutionality of Searches Within a School.

In both Vernonia School District v. Acton and Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 v. Earls, students and their families filed suit against their public schools for prohibiting the student from an after school activity because he/she would not submit to drug testing. In  both cases, the court backed up the schools. In Vernonia School District v. Acton the court said, "The decreased expectation of privacy, the relative unobtrusiveness of the search, and the severity of the need met by the search- we conclude Vernonia's Policy in reasonable and hence constitutional...". In Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 v. Earls the court said, "Because this Policy reasonably serves the School District's important interest in detecting and preventing drug use among its students, we hold that it is constitutional." The main point used by the court in both cases was that preventing drug use in students is a obligation and challenge for the schools to uphold. Because drug testing is a search that helps prevent students from using drugs, the schools have the right to do so.
I agree with the courts ruling. Mainly, because the goal of the government is not trying to catch students doing bad things and punish them. If that was the case, then it would be an invasion of privacy. Passing a drug test is not that hard. Here's the secret. Don't do drugs. The system of Drug Testing in extracurriculars has a goal to get students to stop using drugs. The school is looking out for the students best interest, thier health and safety. I do agree that trying to catch someone doing something illegal without probable cause is violating the first ammendment, but again this is not the case here. The schools are not hoping to catch students involved with drugs, but hoping to stop students from using drugs. I can assure you the school hopes for negative results in every test they do.
The case Safford Unified School District v. Redding had a differing holding in the Supreme Court. To sum up the case, a 13-year-old girl was strip searched based on a classmate's uncorroborated accusation that she previously possessed ibuprofen. The strip search failed to uncover any ibuprofen pills. The article says "the Supreme Court recognized that school officials had no reason to strip search Savana Redding and that the decision to do so was unconstitutional". I agree with this. It's different than the cases reguarding drug testing I spoke about above. With drug testing, schools are trying to encourage students to stop using drugs. With this search, the school humiliated this 13 year old girl just to try and catch her doing something wrong. She speaks about the incident, "I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry." To do this to her, strip search her, was not the appropriate thing to do. Did they have probable cause? Well somewhat, but not enough to strip search her. Another 13 year old student, while getting caught with pills accused Redding of having given them to her. To me that sounds like someone trying to get out of a punishment when caught red handed. This other student wanted to blame someone else and get out of trouble. I'm not saying the school should just ignore this accusation. It might be reason enough to search her backpack and locker. However, before humiliating this girl and invading on her body the school should have gotten a little more knowledge on the accusation which was in fact false.