WAGNER'S FIRST TEST

Our Opinion represents the majority opinion of the Wheel editorial board.

Our New President Must Reform The Drug Testing Policy

Former University President William M. Chace has decided to leave his successor
a political time bomb as a housewarming gift. One year ago, Chace shocked the
campus by suddenly making Emory one of three universities in the nation with a
pre-employment drug-testing policy that requires all potential staff hires to
submit a clean urine sample along with their application. The decision was
handed down from up on high without any prior consultation of faculty or staff
and immediately received a hostile welcome from both.

The former President's supporting arguments, which oddly followed the policy's
enactment, were intuitively powerful. He explained that Emory, as the third
largest employer in Atlanta, is highly susceptible to drug-tainted applicants
and, in the absence of a pre-employment testing policy, would become a magnet
for the disreputable by attracting applicants who get turned down by other
choice employers in Atlanta on account of tainted urine samples.

It has been the consistent opinion of this newspaper that while pre-employment
drug testing possesses an intuitive quality, its practical shortcomings and
moral hazards far outweigh any potential benefit.

Although Emory is a private institution and is thereby exempt from our nation's
principles of civil procedure, it violates these only at the risk of being duly
labeled as an unprincipled institution. The presumption of innocence exists to
protect, among other liberties, a civil degree of personal privacy. Moreover,
by selectively demanding a urine test from all staff applicants while exempting
faculty applicants (consisting largely of professors) from the invasive
standard, Emory's offense is no more than simple discrimination, a unique brand
of financial profiling that mirrors the loathed racial profiling whose
popularity (and legality) is rapidly waning.

Practically speaking, pre-employment drug testing is a plan that beckons
deception. Dedicated applicants need only purchase the proper corner store
ingredients and wait 10 days until their urine can receive a green light from
even the most sophisticated drug test. If nothing else, this fact reduces the
potential benefit of cleansing our applicant pool to the realm of the
negligible, while the offense of reversing the presumption of innocence against
a select class of individuals casts a shameful shadow over those who boast of
such a minuscule triumph.

While it is unfortunate that Chace choose to ignore the recommendation of four
Presidential Commissions, the Employee Council, the Carter Center and an
overwhelming majority of student groups, the primary offense came this June as
Chace summarily dismissed the University Senate's recommendation that
pre-employment drug testing be resigned to high-risk departments, such as those
that employ health employees with access to medication, shuttle drivers and
security guards. Chace, who until then had followed a firmly established
precedent of complying with the Senate's recommendations, dealt the Senate an
inconceivable slap to the face in a one-sentence e-mail -- issued by the Vice
President of Human Resources -- stating that, "After extensive consultation
with the University Senate and institutional leadership, President Chace has
affirmed the policy of pre-employment drug testing for all new hires."

Now, the new University President, James W. Wagner, can end this madness. If he
wants, he can implement the Senate's recommendation and issue a polite rebuff
to the rationale of his predecessor, who rudely left this fiasco in the wake of
his departure. Wagner has been given an opportunity to right a wrong; if he
misses it, it will be an extremely disappointing start for our new President.