DUKE DRUG TESTS COVER WIDE SCOPE

New Policy Lessens Suspensions, Retains Suspected Add-Ons To
Randomized Lists

Questions involving steroid use at Duke have surfaced this month, but
the Athletic Department has sought to provide answers for its
student-athletes since the beginning of the school year, when it
adapted its wide-ranging drug policy.

Duke's revised Student-Athlete Drug Policy, which went into effect in
August, no longer includes athletic suspensions for an athlete's first
positive drug test--a change made to provide a "safety net" with the
threat of suspension and revoked scholarships at stake. The Athletic
Department can still invoke other forms of sanctions for a
student-athlete's first positive test.

Although Athletic Department officials pitch their testing program to
student-athletes as random, they can add players suspected of
substance use to a random group selected for testing five to six times
a year. The University has no obligation to report any finding from
its own institutional drug tests to the NCAA, which performs its own
sporadic testing.

Assistant Director of Athletics Brad Berndt, who oversees drug testing
and academic support, said Duke's new policy for enforcement and
education is comparable to other ACC schools and was instituted
primarily to help the student athletes.

"We felt like there was some ambiguous language in our policy, and it
really wasn't clear to the student-athletes: ‘What's going to
happen if I test positive?'" Berndt said.

"If we could put something in there that would give them a little bit
of a safety net--not an easy way out but a safety net--to seek
assistance and seek opportunity to be educated, and for us to help
them we wanted to have that flexibility."

The drug policy, included in an orientation handbook distributed to
all players each fall, outlines an athletic suspension of 40 percent
of the regular season for a second offense and permanent suspension
after the third. All positive tests also include notification of
teammates, parents and coaches, as well as mandatory counseling and
community service.

In addition, the policy states, "The department also reserves the
right to impose alternative sanctions at anytime, where
appropriate."

Officials said the previous protocol, which they estimated was adopted
in 1999 or 2000 to institute Duke-sponsored drug testing for the first
time, suspended athletes 10 percent of their teams' games for the
first positive test, followed by 50 percent of the season and removal
from the team for the second and third positives, respectively.
Athletic officials did not respond to several requests by The
Chronicle for documents outlining former testing and enforcement policies.

"In 2002, we had a much more open policy with much more flexibility to
it," Berndt said. "We'd suspend certain situations, and other
situations we would not. The bottom line, to be honest with you, we
felt like we wanted to make our policy--from a sanction
standpoint--more clear to our student-athletes."

Totally random?

The Student-Athlete Drug Policy states that students are selected for
testing either randomly or "when a coach or the Director of Athletics
has a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the student-athlete
has used a prohibited drug."

The latter clause, referred to as "probable cause" testing, was part
of the impetus for last year's change in the penalty structure, said
Chris Kennedy, senior associate athletic director.

"All burden fell upon coaches, administrators, officials of the
athletic department to become accusers, to put them in the position of
turning somebody in--potentially causing them to lose their
scholarship," Kennedy said. "You're going to ask for a very high level
of certainty before you do that, and we were afraid that that high
level of certainty standard would preclude getting help to some people
who might have problems that would visibly meet that standard."

Probable cause additions are common at many other schools, but Duke
has not actively communicated the longstanding policy to players in
order to maintain the appearance of complete randomness.

"The motivation behind any drug testing is to try to dissuade any
student-athletes from using drugs," Athletic Director Joe Alleva said.
"If we have suspicion that any athlete is using any drug of any kind,
we can put them on the list."

A number of Duke student-athletes believed the testing selection
process was for the most part random, but they did notice some
inconsistencies and were largely unaware of the probable cause clause.

"They say it's totally random, but there's one guy on the team that's
been tested five or six times in his three years here so far,"
freshman tennis player Ned Samuelson said. "I guess they do rounds of
testing randomly, but I guess depending on who you are they test you
more."

Junior men's lacrosse player K.J. Sauer said he has been tested
twice--once during the fall of his freshman year and once this past
spring--and both tests were negative.

"I know kids that have been tested more than me, and these kids are
straight as they come," he said.

Junior linebacker Brendan Dewan said it was likely that all football
team members would be drug tested at least three times during their
collegiate careers by either the University or the NCAA.

Berndt acknowledged that some athletic teams are tested more often
than others in order to "try and identify a problem early on if there
is a problem." He added that a player who tests positive is "certainly
more likely" to be added to future testing groups under the probable
cause provision.

The Athletic Department increased its testing of Duke's baseball team
following the Fall 2002 arrest of former player Grant Stanley for
possession of anabolic steroids. Stanley said he was tested multiple
times the following spring.

Another former baseball player, Aaron Kempster, said he and three of
his teammates employed the amnesty clause that has existed in Duke's
drug policy for years to tell Kennedy in a confidential meeting that
they had each used steroids.

Because the goal of the drug policy is both to educate students and
provide support for athletes engaging in substance abuse, players can
consult Berndt or Kennedy privately. The Athletic Department pays for
counseling and therapy after an initial admission of a problem.

To prepare its student-athletes for drug-testing, Duke distributes
guidelines in the Student-Athlete Handbook each year and also
discusses it at eligibility meetings that begin the academic year.

Athletic trainers are knowledgeable about the long list of banned
drugs, which include anabolic steroids, other performance-enhancing
substances, narcotics and illegal drugs, officials said.

"They bring in multiple people to discuss not only anabolic steroids
but also the stuff you get at GNC," Dewan said. "The majority of that
stuff is banned by the NCAA."

The testing landscape

The University contracts the National Center for Drug Free Sport, the
same company that administers the NCAA's testing, to conduct tests on
campus approximately five to six times a year.

Berndt selects a date and, after compiling a list of between 25 and 30
student-athletes, notifies Duke coaches the day before a test. Coaches
normally relay the information to their players at practice, leaving
players approximately 12 hours before having to report early the
following morning.

While testing officials observe them, the athletes are asked to
provide a urine sample, which is then tested on-site for specific
gravity and pH to determine if the athletes have diluted it by
drinking large quantities of water or taking a masking agent. Once a
valid sample is collected, student-athletes watch as the officials
seal the vials to prevent any tampering. Further tests are completed
at outside labs.

Because steroid-specific tests cost more than those for street
drugs--marijuana and heroine, for example--they are not necessarily
conducted each time a sample is given. A 2001 NCAA study of substance
use in programs across the country reported that only 26 percent of
samples collected in Division I institutional drug tests were tested
for anabolic steroids.

In a report about the Duke baseball team published in The Chronicle
April 15, current and former players described a culture of steroid
use that reached its peak in the summer of 2002. Kempster and Stanley
said they used steroids that summer without fear of being caught.

Berndt said Duke has the authority to conduct drug tests during the
summer but has never invoked that right. Most steroids clear out of a
body's system after about a month, said Dr. William Roberts, president
of the American College of Sports Medicine.

"Testing didn't occur all that often, and, plus, once school got out
you weren't tested," Stanley said. "There were loopholes within the
testing program. At the end of each semester you were confident that
you weren't going to get tested and you could do what you please."

Each institution has the right to define its own drug-testing policy
and sanctions without having to report its findings to the NCAA or any
other governing body.

NCAA President Myles Brand said the NCAA investigates information it
receives regarding accusations of drug use, but he admitted that the
collegiate governing body is limited in its authority.

"Sometimes in the summer, if they're not attending summer school, we
don't have the legal authority to test," Brand said at a panel
discussion Tuesday at North Carolina. "So we test when they come back."

The NCAA conducts year-round testing at every Division I institution
in football and, in a policy change implemented this year, one
additional sport each year. Before August, football and track and
field were the only sports subject to year-round testing by the NCAA,
although all teams could be tested at any stage of both team and
individual postseason championships. The NCAA penalizes athletes who
test positive for any banned substance with a minimum one-year
suspension and loss of a year of eligibility.

"We have a guarantee to test every championship once every five
years," said Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's assistant director of education
outreach and point person on drug testing and education. "Some sports
are tested more often than others because of history, drug use surveys
and increased performance use."

In 2002-2003, the latest year for which results are available, about 1
percent of the NCAA's samples came back positive for a banned
substance. Duke has not released any of its drug testing results.

The NCAA conducts its tests at Duke once or twice a year, and it
remains unlikely that the NCAA will bring institutional testing under
its monitoring umbrella.

"There are different programs that have different needs and different
problems, and so I think it'd be pretty difficult to do across the
board," Berndt said of the possibility of the NCAA overseeing all
Division I drug testing. "They've streamlined the process for
championship events, and I think that's the extent of their
involvement, at least for right now."

Jake Poses, Matt Sullivan and Andrew Yaffe contributed reporting to this
story.