J.L. Bailey is an unclassified graduate student. He can be contacted at [email protected].“Freedom/Freedom/ Sometimes I feel like a motherless child/Sometimes I feel like a motherless child/A long way from my home.” – Richie Havens
I’m not feeling too much love these days.
Last summer marked the 40th anniversary of the infamous “Summer of Love,” where, especially on college campuses, invocations for peace, freedom and unbridled expressions of love filled the national air.
An escalating war in Vietnam provided a backdrop to growing unrest among young people as Americans watched each night’s evening news with revelations that body counts had been “underestimated.” College students all over the country chanted and marched for freedom.
The 40th anniversary of Woodstock is a mere two years away. One might be led to believe that certain members of the MSU community are already prepping for the celebration.
Last week the Faculty Senate debated procedures concerning alcohol and drug testing for university faculty and staff. This was in response to the President Foglesong’s directive to the Faculty Senate to develop a drug and alcohol testing policy that goes beyond those already mandated by state and federal law.
The Senate does support a Policy on an Alcohol and Drug Free Workspace. They also realize the necessity for testing under circumstances in which workers are in “sensitive occupations.”
In its Sept. 14 minutes, the Senate states, “The Robert Holland Faculty Senate believes that any random or prescriptive drug testing of faculty is an invasion of privacy and would constitute a ceding of individual rights, unless sufficient/comprehensive evidence exists whereby probable cause for testing may be invoked.”
What’s going on at MSU?
Why should there be additional policies?
Can you imagine the disruption caused by long lines of faculty members single file in front of Allen Hall awaiting dispense of their personal bar-coded cup with a yellow top? Instructions will then be given to march single file to the Student Health Center, where specimen cups will be collected and analytical tests will be performed to determine if faculty or staff members perform their daily assigned duties in altered states.
It costs the university almost $70 per person for drug testing. That’s a lot of money that could purchase needed paint, toilet paper, chalk, printer supplies and even – here I go again – books.
In response to my concern for university budgetary constraints, I have created a cheaper and more effective alternative. It’s called the Bailey-Floyd Test.
All persons who are listed on the “To Test” list will be required to gather at Lee Hall Auditorium at midnight on a Friday between now and Thanksgiving. Black lights will activate and strobe lights will flicker while the sound system plays “Speak To Me/Breathe,” the first cut from Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon. After two minutes, if individuals walk down from the stage, sit back in a seat, prop up their legs in the seat in front of them and utter, “Oh, wow, man,” you’ve got a positive test.
At that time, the intervention squads can whisk them away into an interrogation room and determine the extent of their impairment.
After all, what conscientious student wants their professor belting out a few bars from Jimi Hendrix behind the podium as class begins. (Note: Should this scenario occur, then no further testing is needed.)
My test would cost nothing.
Since it makes so much sense to enact more stringent policies to determine a professor’s state of inebriation and/or heroin, coke/Coke, crack, Vicodin or caffeine use, then by all means complete the testing as soon as possible.
Why?
It is obvious: we won’t tolerate a bunch of drugged-out, strung-out drunks who have a day job teaching at this university.
Let’s clean up this place. I volunteer to pick up a yellow-top plastic specimen cup and offer my own sample.
There is no reason to lull ourselves into a false sense of security: Don’t stop with drug and alcohol testing.
Will a presidential directive be dispatched to the Faculty Senate requiring all male faculty, staff and students to wear black pants, a white shirt and a dark tie? For women, no pants, just black dresses.
If we are going to be one big happy campus of clean and sober faculty and staff, then why not dress in required uniforms; we should look the same, too.