Pre-warning: this post will be a jumble of confusion until I am finished editing it at which point this sentence will be removed.
I haven't gone through the whole thread, just responding to the OP but:
I bet they don't test for tobacco, do they?
EDIT:
The way I see it, if somebody is hell-bent on getting into a "good" university and being a serious and successful student, then it stands to reason they'd be willing to put down the pipe long enough to pass the silly random high school piss tests.
I'm assuming we are talking about pot. Should they be forced to though? If they are already working for free for job experience, such as veterinarians are required to do before entering Michigan State University, and providing money to the university in one form or another, where is the line to be drawn? At which point is it no longer fair for the institution to dictate requirements that are outside their jurisdiction? If two people qualify for a school through the work they have done, both socially drink alcohol but one smokes pot socially, why is the smoker less viable? Is it because of the stigma associated with pot, or because pot is worse than alcohol, or is it because pot is technically bad because it is an overly controlled substance and people from all walks of life and layers of society have found ways to profit (monetarily or socially) from such a black market, whether by enforcing the laws or breaking them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition (my final note on pot is that, yes, it should definitely be regulated or else you have large corporations that take over the vast share of the business, and somehow they probably will manage to keep their product out of the drug tests because it must be ok if a company sells it somehow because they have lots of money and lawyers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robitussin [a note on the tussin, just so I don't give someone a really bad experience. You want the dex kind if you were to experiment with it, but I recommend only trying it once if you are already determined to do so (I am not recommending you try it, this is simply so that if you do decide to experiment due to something you read on the internet it isn't a series of hypothetically dangerous trials and errors. Dex is very hard to overdose on in 15mg syrup form, but some of the other things they put in alongside it in some of the tuss products can be easily immediately dangerous) as it is quite possibly as addictive as any other mood changing drug is. The Guaifenesin kind will make your sinuses very dry, which could be painful or dangerous so avoid that. The kind with
only Dextromethorphan in it will likely be safe to take in small amounts depending on the brand, but be warned, dex is very potent for about 8 hours and the following day you may feel strange depending on the dosage. Also, I mention the differences in brands as I know that there is a Vicks product (Custom Care I think is the product name) robotussin to stay away from that has Dextromethorphan written as the only listed active ingredient but it also contains baking soda as an inactive ingredient so apparently it makes your body unable to control internal fluids so your legs or feet swell up temporarily if you drink upon that sort of tuss potion in excess of the recommended amount.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edema I suppose you would want to look in the inactive ingredients to see if there are things such as baking soda (sodium bicarbonate I believe is the scientific term.]
However, if you want to look at a well written law covering the distribution of controlled plant products, check out the Michigan Marihuana Program:
The meat and potatos)
There are many more valid things to be rallying against. Where I live, for example, schools do not allow kids to wear hats. Why? Potential gang signs. Nevermind that we've never really had a problem with gangs, or that the rule is completely and utterly ineffectual even if we did (any piece of clothing, mannerism, or saying can be turned into a "gang sign"). Can't wear hats, pretty much just 'cause.
Wait, hats? Really? I don't think anybody cares about high school kids wearing hats or not, except gang members and show-offs with expensive hats.
In my high school hats were also not allowed, along with every other trivial limit they could impose upon us, with the usual excuse given that they were a 'distraction.' In reality it is simply another way of imposing the administrator's will upon their subjects. In this way the students are made to feel as if they are not in control of any aspect of their surroundings, which of course prepares them to continue jumping through the hoops for someone in adult life. To me this seems like a needless waste of energy, since breaking someone's will is not a good way to get them started on the road to success in my book.
Secondly, I also had one of those attendance policies in place at my school where you can only miss 8 days. This sounds good on paper but in reality it was used as a tool to remove kids that did not get along with the favored as suspensions were either 1 or 5 or 10 days. Can you guess who got the 5 day suspensions and who got the 10? Being able to threaten a high schooler with nullifying a whole schoolyear due to a moderate infraction of the rules is draconian in my book. I knew several kids who were expelled from school for a year for relatively minor (for an adult) infractions. Often times it was when they finally reacted to being picked on for years by the least punishable students, the sons of important local business owners who also are on the school board.
In my area there is one private lake that caters to the wealthiest in the area, and in addition to having the nicest material things (one of these students burned out the engine in his brand new big truck doing something stupid [we weren't allowed to talk about it in class because that would have been 'picking on him' so I don't know what he did since we weren't supposed to ask questions in class of the people who might know what happened, and the only time it would have been possible to ask was in class since we were ostracized from their parties and social things] and he showed up the next week in another brand new truck.)
The students from there were also treated preferably by the school due to the weight their parents carried in the community and the school board and such. This extended to the point where myself and others behaved relatively like angels (by that I mean we were either nice to people or ignored them
[I should have done less ignoring in retrospect]
instead of competing or bullying them to be at the top of the social pyramid) compared to what those kids got away with to avoid getting in enough trouble to be sent to the 'alternative high school'
(which was a total joke even compared to the normal high school, the principal there was well known by everyone to be a jovial cokehead (although from hearsay he was not a terrible or bad person; he apparently was actually a pretty good guy though I never met him; the kids he dealt with were so sick of the education system that they were far from upset about attending the alternate high school; most had a much better time there socially although I doubt educationally; while the atmosphere seemed more friendly and casual there the standards of learning were abysmal)
while the wealthy kids partied it up outside of school and copied from our tests in it.
Also I should note that I went to a public school. I don't think public schools are bad; in fact quite the opposite. I just think that mine was run by people more concerned with operating smoothly than fairly, and also by people who had an interest in making sure some kids 'succeed' (by which I mean not flunk like I would have had I done what they did) regardless of the effort put into study. My former high school had a sit in protest once (for one day because those who continued would have received a 10 day suspension) because a teacher who actually tried to lighten the burden of the more downtrodden students was laid off simply because she was about to fulfill her contract agreement where she would have gotten access to some sort of stipend for having worked for x amount of time at the school, which was of course not a problem for teachers who didn't go well out of their way to be very nice to me and people like myself.
Also, before I am accused of playing the victim, my high school was not absolutely terrible I suppose. I and my friends had to sneak around like I said to avoid being targeted by both administrators who thought bad apples infect others, despite the fact the apples weren't too bad until they are thrown out; and also we had to ignore the students that used their hierarchy to make life tougher for us. For example, my group of friends enjoyed hackey-sacking outside the school doors during lunchtime. We had started indoors but hackey-sack can be most violent towards your surroundings, so when the time came for the principal to raise the issue with us we were able to request special permission to stand outside the school doors to hack. This continued happily for some time, until our peers who we sought to avoid started to raise claims of discrimination in that they were not allowed outside as well. This may seem justifiable, yet you should remember that these are what we called 'party people' who would eventually push the limit as far as they can because they won't get in much trouble. The school administration capitulated to these claims of unfairness, after a bit of resistance (for which I give them a lot of credit, I'm sure they were doing the best they could in their situation and it was nice of whoever of them to try to give us some space) and quite quickly the distinction between outside and cafeteria was negligible. Unfortunately in my youth I was somewhat nonchalant about the consequences of making a biodegradable mess outside. Apparently ketchup will stick to brick walls and become a solid chunky stain once exposed to Autumn's dry air for a weekend. As far as I know that was the worst I did regarding screwing up that situation, and it was a minor yet visible stain, but since the number of people out there was quite large on nice days it was inevitable that eventually enough things like that would screw something up. I don't even know what it was, but the official reason given was something to do with security reasons as those darn 'screwup' kids from the alternate high school would occasionally visit their old friends. I've always felt that flagrant ketchup stain may have played a part though.
So, anyways, there is my personal story about Minor's Rights. Take from it what you will. Also I've long forgiven my classmates, teachers, and other administrators. I think they were doing the best they felt they could. Basically it went from a small hack circle to half the cafeteria spilling outdoors even in winter just for the freedom of being outside for a short while.