Drugs and College Don’t, Shouldn’t, Mix

A few months ago in San Diego I spoke to an audience of college trustees and regents about the moral responsibilities of a university. I told them that some institutions of higher learning in this country could be doing a better job of caring for the moral and indeed the physical well-being of their students. I said that “all colleges must protect students form certain influences--drugs, criminals, fraud, exploitation.

“For example,” I continued, “parents should be able to expect colleges to do their best to keep pushers off campus, and to get drug users off campus if they are already there. Parents expect colleges to be positively, publicly and actively against these things. Parents do not expect colleges to be neutral when it comes to the difference between decent morality and decadence.”

For these statements I was accused by one person in the audience of sounding like “a small-town PTA president.” Another dismissed my “simplistic” way of looking at things. A college trustee said that she was “embarrassed by the lack of depth” to my understanding of what higher education is all about.

Now the recent death of Maryland basketball star Len Bias has led others to acknowledge the salience of such “simplistic” principles. Some college officials have begun to acknowledge the extent of drug use on their campuses. Perhaps the time has come for all who govern our colleges to face this truth: Being simple and straightforward about the moral responsibility of adults is not the same as being simplistic and unsophisticated.

American institutions of higher education often depict themselves as the social and moral conscience of the nation. Their professors and administrators rarely hesitate to tell the rest of society what is right and what is wrong. There is nothing wrong with this, especially if accompanied by due respect for freedom of thought and diversity of expression.

But the credibility of any claim to moral authority ultimately depends on having one’s own house in order. This means that colleges should start by demonstrating their own moral responsibility. There is no reason that the adults in charge should not come right out and say it: Drugs are wrong, and they have no place on campus.

The simple truth is that there is nothing that is more inimical than drugs to a college’s job of cultivating in a mind the taste and habit for what is good, valuable, noble and exemplary. Nothing is more threatening to higher learning, nothing can destroy a mind as fast as drugs. Nothing, as the case of Len Bias has reminded us, can destroy a promising life so quickly. Yet in some places the people who are in charge act as though they have no power over, no influence on, no responsibility for the presence of drugs on campuses, or among their students.

If a college is really interested in teaching its students a clear lesson in moral responsibility, it should tell the truth about drugs in a straightforward way. This summer our college presidents should send every student a letter saying that they will not tolerate drugs on campus--period. The letter should then spell out precisely what the college’s policy will be toward students who use drugs. Every tuition-paying parent and taxpaying citizen should welcome such a letter.

We have reached the point at which drugs are pervasive in many parts of our culture. No one expects colleges to clean up the entire society, but they can surely see that their own campuses are clean. There is no shortage of success stories in secondary education to show them how.

The Anne Arundel County School District in Maryland, for example, gives every student a one-page pamphlet describing school drug policy. A student caught using drugs is suspended, is required to take a drug-education program, and must meet with his parents and school administrators. A student caught using drugs a second time is expelled. And if a student is caught distributing drugs on school grounds, he is expelled immediately--no second chances. Drug use has declined 60% since the get-tough policy was introduced.

If schools can do it, colleges can do it, too. Many colleges used to, and some do today. All should. Drugs can destroy 19-year-old minds just as quickly as 16-year-old minds.

More and more, Americans are beginning to say: Enough. It’s time for the higher-education community to respond.