Linn State Technical College in Missouri certainly had a different start to their semester than ASU. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the “1,200 students enrolled at the Missouri institution were required to provide urine samples in what may be the most extensive drug-testing policy at a public college or university in the country.”
Mandatory drug testing within schools and colleges certainly hasn’t taken the nation by storm as of yet, but with Linn State setting the example, how long before others follow suit?
A number of reasons have been given by Linn State to justify their new policy. “Since many of the school's programs include hands-on training with heavy machinery, high-voltage electronics and even nuclear technology, school leaders say drug testing will help ensure student safety and prepare graduates to work for employers with zero-tolerance for substance abuse,” Richard R. Pemberton, Linn State's associate dean of student affairs, told The Chronicle.
ASU, however, with a much larger student body than Linn State, and boasting a wider variety of degree programs, should keep a wary eye towards these emerging procedures. Linn State’s argument might fly in the case of its own circumstances, but at ASU, the logic falls apart.
“I would hope that ASU students would object strenuously to such an unwarranted invasion of their collective privacy, to the cost of a needless procedure, and to the implication that a significant number among them have a drug problem,” said Dr. Doris Marie Provine, a professor of Justice & Social Inquiry at the School of Social Transformation.
“Drug tests are a largely symbolic gesture to reaffirm an institution's opposition to some forms of drug use, and to signal its control over even the leisure-time activities of a population.”
Drug testing in schools is only the tip of the iceberg, as mandatory drug screenings have been apart of the working world for a long time.
Many graduates from ASU and elsewhere venture into career fields in which employers require prospective employees to submit to drug testing as part of the initial hiring process, and warn their newly-hired employees to expect random screenings throughout their employment.
One of the most futile aspects of these types of drug screenings is how little they actually do to help the test takers or protect them from harm.
Take ASU for example. “This procedure is likely to expose marijuana use, and possibly very recent ingestion of some other drugs. It is also likely to deter use of certain drugs, at least in the period shortly before the test … (but) it will have no effect on use of the most widespread and damaging drugs on college campuses: alcohol and tobacco. The situation in Missouri was much different, but even there the policy seems misguided and frankly silly,” Provine said.
Bad blood in the employer-employee (college-student) relationship is inevitably the result of the shortcomings of mandatory drug screenings. Institutions ought to start judging their members on the content of their character, rather than their urine.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu
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