The Duke University Athletic Department will announce a new drug policy today in the wake of allegations that former members of the baseball team used steroids.
For the first time, the University's new policy includes a different penalty scale for anabolic steroids and street drugs, which include marijuana, cocaine and other recreational drugs. The policy, effective immediately, states that an athlete who tests positive for steroids, blood doping or masking agents will face a one-year suspension, while a second offense will result in a permanent loss of eligibility.
"I think our policy is appropriate in every respect for a top university like Duke," Duke law professor James Coleman, who chaired the committee that recommended the changes, said in a statement released to The Chronicle. "The policy is tough, but fair. It is designed primarily to encourage compliance by making the penalty for noncompliance unacceptably damaging for any student who attends Duke."
In the previous policy, last updated in August 2004, the first-offense penalty for both steroids and street drugs was counseling and notification of the athlete's coach, teammates and parents. No suspension was listed in the previous policy for first-time offenders.
After a second offense under the old policy, players were suspended for 40 percent of their regular-season games. A third positive test resulted in a loss of eligibility.
"We felt like the major difference between the old and new is the way we treat a steroid positive," Assistant Director of Athletics Brad Berndt said. "In the past we treated [a positive test for steroids] just the same as a positive for street drugs or ephedrine or various supplements."
Under the new policy, the penalty for a first positive test for street drugs remains unchanged. Any student-athlete who tests positive a second time will be suspended for a minimum of 50 percent of a season and a third violation will result in a permanent ban from competition.
Failure to submit to testing, the use of masking agents or any attempt to manipulate a drug test will also be treated as a positive steroid test.
"This eliminates any benefit for a student using steroids to skip a test and any incentive for a student using street drugs to skip a test," Coleman said.
Coleman served as the head of a six-person committee that Duke President Richard Brodhead appointed in part as a result of a story that appeared in The Chronicle last April. Former baseball players Aaron Kempster and Grant Stanley told The Chronicle they injected themselves with steroids during the summer of 2002. Kempster and Stanley said other teammates were also using steroids while at Duke.
"We wanted to make sure, given some of those allegations that we were comfortable with our policy," Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said.
Conducting a steroid test costs more than double the price of a standard five-panel screen for street drugs and ephedrine-the University pays $44 for the standard test and $108 to screen for steroids. But Berndt, who coordinates drug education and testing for the athletic department, said more athletes will be tested, and a higher percentage of those tests will check for anabolic agents under the new policy.
Although the committee read the policies of many other Division I universities, it did not necessarily consult those who wrote the individual policies, Trask said.
The University of North Carolina's drug policy, for instance, states that the University shall "terminate the student-athlete's eligibility" for a positive test of a banned substance that is an anabolic agent. The Duke committee did not believe such a strict policy was fair to Duke student-athletes.
"We felt there should be no tolerance for steroids," Coleman said. "But we also thought it was important to keep in mind that we are an educational institution. We felt it was appropriate to give a student who tested positive for a steroid a second chance to learn from and recover from the error, if possible."
Berndt said coaches had some input into the committee's policy changes and they were supportive of the new penalties. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which is comprised of members of all of Duke's 26 varsity sports, also offered feedback during the creation of the new policy.
"A school like Duke is going to want to have the highest standards for all sorts of steroid policies," said Reade Seligmann, a sophomore midfielder on the men's lacrosse team. "I think that Duke is always in the limelight, and its athletes have to be held to higher standards."
Seligmann said men's lacrosse head coach Mike Pressler advised the team not to use supplements or anything that could induce a positive test, including the popular energy drink Red Bull and the nutritional supplement Creatine.
Mike Van Pelt contributed to this story.
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