Missouri Tech College to drug test everybody.

Linn State Technical College, a two-year college in Missouri, is the first to mandate that all incoming students be drug tested in order to prepare them for the drug-free environments of the corporate world. I’d be interested to see how many transfer applications were filed in the wake of this. Citing high schools’ increasing use of drug tests among their students, Linn State Technical College say that the drug screenings are necessary for maintaining a safe campus environment where engineering students regularly work on aircraft engines, nuclear assemblies and all manner of dangerous equipment. Civil Libertarians are up in arms over the proposed mandatory campus-wide drug screenings, citing the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unlawful searches and seizures. Testing fees are paid by students and if a student fails the drug screening he or she has 45 days to test clean or take a drug addiction therapy course. All in all it sounds like a gigantic load of crap honestly, and way too much to put up with to attend a two year school in this economic environment. Preparing students for a drug free workplace is a crap reason to institute campus wide drug screenings and sounds like the kind of justification thrown around in the fever dream meeting where this plan was concocted. I think it is telling that the only time I have ever heard of this school is in its attempts at testing all of its students for drugs. Perhaps if they focused on scholarship and student development over gimmicky, headline-grabbing ploys like this one I could take them seriously. As it stands, it will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out in the court system.