The Guilfordian

While Guilford's students, faculty, and administration struggle to break down the athlete, non-athlete divide, a drug testing policy that will only perpetuate this divide is being developed. By going beyond the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) required drug-testing standards and instituting a policy that includes randomized and out of season testing, we are questioning the integrity of and setting a higher standard for our student-athletes. Furthermore, the decision to do so is being made out of accordance with Guilford's practice of community discussion.

Currently, Guilford College follows the NCAA drug-testing policy that serves to keep student-athletes safe and prevent them from gaining a competitive advantage during their season of competition. By adopting a policy in which student-athletes are tested out of season, we are stepping beyond the boundaries of necessary testing and into the realm of mistrust. Testing student-athletes throughout the year to ensure they're not gaining a competitive advantage inherently makes the assumption that we can't trust them on their own, thus making the assumption that the integrity of student-athletes is less than that of students not participating in athletics.

In addition, randomized testing serves as a sobriety test for the student-athletes tested, which in turn creates a higher ethical standard than what is applied to the general student body. Student-athletes already face double jeopardy when they get in trouble, in that they are punished by both Campus Life and the Athletics Department. Randomized testing will only push that standard higher by singling out student-athletes in the search for transgression.

Standards aside, this decision is not being made in accordance with Guilford's core values. No open forums have been held; no community input has been invited, and only a select few administrators, including Vice President of Enrollment and Campus Life Randy Doss, Dean for Campus Life Aaron Fetrow, and Interim Athletic Director Tom Palombo, have been involved in reviewing the policy created by the Athletic Training staff. Virtually all decisions are open for community discussion at Guilford, from what beverage company we sponsor to whether or not a teacher is granted tenure. So how is a decision like this, which will affect over a quarter of our student population directly, not even up for debate?

Should this policy be adopted, the line separating athletes and non-athletes will be bolded and the divide between them widened exponentially. We will violate Guilford's core value of Equality by calling into question the integrity of our student-athletes only because they play sports, and we will be supporting unequal ethical codes on the same basis. Furthermore, should this policy be implemented without consent, or at least discussion from the Guilford community, the very ideals that our institution is founded on will be defied.

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