The University Of Alabama Has Started Drug Testing Fraternity Members For No Reason

Jared Borislow10 years ago

We just did a whole column about why the University of Alabama sucks, and if we had known that Bama has been drug testing fraternity members for no reason sooner, it probably would’ve been the centerpiece of that article.

From AL.com:

Beginning this academic year, UA has been quietly drug-testing active members of multiple Greek organizations, including the Alabama chapters of the prominent Sigma Nu and Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternities, in the first run of a mandatory screening regime that some experts say is the boldest and most extensive in the nation.

Six current and former members of the impacted chapters told AL.com over the past month that they now require their members to submit to periodic urinalysis at a UA facility in order to maintain good standing with the organizations and the school. The university confirmed that it is drug-testing members of some Greek organizations, though it declined to say how many or which ones. In addition to testing urine, the university has played a role in testing samples of some fraternity members’ hair for evidence of drug use over a period of months.

What. The. Fuck.

This is the most blatantly obvious case of profiling I’ve ever seen. Why in the world does a fraternity member have to have his piss checked for quaaludes to remain in good standing with the university but a GDI can go around smoking all the peyote he wants? In what way is this okay?

Many chapters around the country require drug tests of their members for them to remain in good standing with the local fraternity, but it is unprecedented for a university — a state-funded university, no less — to mandate drug tests for a group of hand-selected students who have done nothing wrong.

I highly recommend giving the whole article a read, as it does a good job of describing the program and its negative effects, like how it has pushed fraternity members into using more dangerous, harder-to-detect drugs like Xanax.

This is bizarre, unconstitutional, and just a flat-out horrendous program that needs to be ended..

[via AL.com]