Pubdate: Sat, 03 Mar 2012
Source: Morning Call (Allentown, PA)
Copyright: 2012 The Morning Call Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/DReo9M8z
Website: http://www.mcall.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/275
Author: Bill White

SCHOOL DRUG TESTING SHOULDN'T BE RANDOM

I think any form of random drug testing of teachers and/or students 
is a bad idea.

This subject has cropped up more than once in the Bangor Area School 
District, where one teacher died two years ago of a heroin overdose 
in the apartment of another teacher who admitted he supplied teens 
with drugs. Now I see that Saucon Valley School Director Ed Inghrim 
is pushing the idea, on the basis of some goofy "unscientific poll" 
involving kids he walked up to in restaurants and other public 
places. He says most of them said they knew students who used or sold drugs.

Of course some kids in our schools use and sell drugs. This was true 
when I was a teenager, and I have no doubt it's true now.

But the solution is not to adopt the legally questionable approach of 
randomly testing everyone or members of arbitrarily chosen subgroups. 
In the case of teachers, the proper solution is to conduct 
pre-employment testing and to test teachers whose behavior gives some 
indication of a problem. In the case of students, it's to respond to 
specific evidence of problems in an individual or a specific group.

Basically, it's the difference between acting appropriately when 
there appears to be a real problem or invading people's privacy 
without cause and wasting money the school districts don't have on 
random testing and legal challenges.

Random testing of teachers almost certainly couldn't be imposed 
legally without collective bargaining. There are other districts 
around Pennsylvania that test some of their students, although the 
state Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that it's unconstitutional unless 
the districts can show that the group of students being tested has a 
high drug-use rate. Establishing that in Saucon Valley probably will 
take a lot more than the Inghrim Poll.

I understand the visceral and political appeal of rounding everyone 
up for blood tests. But when you consider the expense, the legal 
ramifications and just plain common sense, the less dramatic approach 
is the right one.

* No one should need more evidence that Pennsylvania is making it too 
difficult for victims of child sex abuse to name and confront their 
victims. But a defense memo in the trial of Philadelphia Monsignor 
William Lynn offers still more support for legislation to extend our 
state's statutes of limitations for these cases.

Advocates for victims of child sex abuse, many of whom were victims 
themselves, have been pressing for House Bills 832 and 878, which 
respectively would repeal the statute of limitations from the point 
of passage forward in civil suits relating to child sex abuse and 
provide a one-time two-year window for victims to bring civil action 
in cases barred by the current law. These bills remain stalled in the 
state House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Ron Marsico, 
R-Dauphin, is keeping them bottled up.

There are many reasons why it makes sense to extend the statutes for 
these types of cases, and one of them was affirmed by the defense 
memo from Lynn, who is accused of keeping predator priests in 
ministry and transferring them from parish to parish. His trial 
begins later this month.

Lynn claims that he created a list of problem priests in 1994, but 
the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua ordered it shredded. The memo 
says Lynn's superior at that time, Monsignor James Molloy, saved a 
copy and put it in a locked safe at the archdiocese, where it was 
found more than a decade later.

I'm always suspicious when plaintiffs pull out the old The Dead Guy 
Did It defense, but whether Lynn's claims are true or not, I don't 
see how anyone -- particularly if they read either of the 
Philadelphia grand jury reports on the scandal -- could doubt at this 
point that the diocese engaged in a concerted effort to keep these 
sex abuse allegations secret. The sudden appearance of these new 
documents demonstrates that legal action is the only way in many 
cases to drag these secrets out into the light of truth and justice.

This isn't just about priests, of course. These predators come from 
all walks of life, and because it takes some of these tormented 
victims decades to come to grips with what happened to them and to 
speak up about it, the statutes have protected them, even where there 
was no active cover-up.

Until we open that two-year window to give them their day in court, 
our laws will continue to stand on the side of predators and cover-up 
artists. Tell your elected representatives that you want this to change.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart