A Flathead Valley, Montana, based independent journal of observation, analysis, and opinion.

22 Aril 2008

Proposed Whitefish High School drug testing: no appeals of test results?

That’s certainly one interpretation of the following paragraph from the draft policy (download here):

Any student who willfully provides a false sample or otherwise tampers with a sample or undertakes any effort to obstruct, evaluate or impair the accuracy of the drug test will be suspended from participation in the current activity season and the next season for which the student would have been eligible and qualified to participate.

The key word is “evaluate,” for which the Oxford American College Dictionary provides this definition: “form an idea of the amount, number, or value of; assess.”

If the intent of the paragraph is providing a penalty for a student who tries to beat the test by, for example, providing a bogus or tainted sample, the word “evaluate” is not needed. But if the intent is to prevent the student from challenging the results of the test, by, say, alleging a laboratory error, then inserting “evaluate” in the paragraph works reasonably well.

Perhaps this is a case of sloppy writing, a case of one word too many triggering the law of unintended consequences. But it could be a case of deliberately trying to deny students the right to challenge positive-for-drugs test results.

I suspect the latter possibility is more likely. The program of random drug testing proposed for WHS is a policy of guilty until proven innocent. Those who embrace that philosophy, a class that includes the author of the draft policy, are, I think, more than likely to favor denying students who test positive the right to hire lawyers and experts in an attempt to challenge the test result and testing program. In other words, “Hey, kid, don’t talk back, don’t lawyer-up, and don’t evaluate.”