DECISION DELAYED ON DRUG POLICY FOR ATHLETES

YORKTOWN - In establishing punishment for drug, tobacco or alcohol use by
student athletes, Yorktown parents and school officials are trying set
rules that are not too harsh or too lenient, but just right. Whether the
penalties recently proposed fit that description will be up to the revamped
Mount Pleasant Township Community School Board to decide next month.

Presented with a proposed new policy on Tuesday, outgoing board President
Ed Armantrout declined to bring up the proposal for a vote because he
believed the current board would not approve it.

Created by a committee of parents and school officials, the proposal would
require that any athlete possessing or using tobacco, alcohol or other
controlled substances be suspended immediately from all sports for 365 days
after the offense. Limits are set at 50 percent of the season for the first
offense, an entire season for the second offense, and for the rest of high
school for the third offense.

To focus not just on punishment but also on rehabilitation, the proposal
specifies that students could reduce the length of their suspensions the
first or second time by participating in counseling, treatment or
rehabilitation. Three-time offenders could appeal to a committee for
possible reinstatement after a year.

A 29-member committee of parents and school officials was named to come up
with a new policy after 11 Yorktown High School students - some of them
athletes - were arrested in December after allegedly being caught at school
with the drug OxyContin.

If approved by the school board - which gets two new members in July - the
committee's proposal will replace a policy that suspends athletes for a set
number of games for the first offense, but only for sports then in season,
Armantrout said.

Second and third violations result in 1-year suspensions, regardless of season.

Board member Steve Guinn said Friday that many members of the public, and
even the committee, seemed divided over whether that punishment should be
more severe or less severe.

Allowance of an appeal after a year's suspension on the third offense was
the committee's attempt to provide a compromise, Armantrout said.

Armantrout said he believed the majority of the current board might prefer
an even tougher policy. "I don't know what the new group's going to do," he
said.

Parents at Tuesday's meeting asked to meet with the board to explain the
committee's intent before any vote was taken.

Even the proposed new penalties might be more lenient than those set by
other local schools, Armantrout said.

Athletes at Central and Southside high schools who violate rules about
drug, alcohol or tobacco can be suspended or removed from teams, as well as
receive the same school penalty as any other student, according to Don
Holderman, director of student services for Muncie Community Schools.

Such rules are fairly consistent among other schools in the region and the
conference, Holderman added.

"Those students are representative of the school," he said.