Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Missouri has taken the bold and constitutionally questionable step of putting in place a policy that says all students must submit to mandatory drug testing or face expulsion from the school.
The plan has been in the works for several years, and will be implemented in the beginning of the 2013 - 2014 school year. Students will be required to submit while a barber cuts no fewer than sixty hairs from a students head, arms, legs, or underarms. The school assured kshb.com that they will not be attempting to collect hairs from any of the students private areas, much to the relief of all who thought this story would descend into some type of tyrannical madness. They won't be forcing the teens to remove their pants and expose themselves to adults who are not medical doctors, while they attack their genitalia with scissors, ladies and gentlemen. So please put your minds at ease, all is well.
The hairs will then be sent to a corporation named Psychemedics which will test the hairs for a variety of drugs that will include: marijuana, cocaine, PCP, meth, alcohol, ecstasy, and a variety of other substances.
If drugs are found in a student's system, they are sent to a guidance counselor and their parents are contacted for a meeting. No staff members outside of the counselor's office will be privy to the information gathered from the drug tests. The school says they plan to destroy all records about a student's drug history after they graduate.
How is Rockhurst able to get away with this? They are a private school says tokesignals.com, and according to Doug Bonney, the legal director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, "Nothing prohibits it, but it is a colossal waste of money."
Parents who enroll their students sign a contract, and if they parents do not wish to adhere to the policies of the school they are welcome to remove their child at anytime.
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