Before the Homecoming dance, the San Luis Obispo High School administration made an announcement on Tiger News Network and Student Congress that they would be randomly breathalyzing students at the doors of the new gym. The desired effect was to give students a heads-up or a chance to make the right decision rather than trying to catch them and get people in trouble.
The result? Of the 620 people who went, Associated Student Body adviser Jim Johnson said, “Zero people got busted for drinking.”
However, I think that breathalyzing only encouraged the use of harder drugs for the kids who were going to do illicit activities beforehand anyways. The breathalyzing announcement persuaded students who were toying with the idea of drinking before the dance to not do it. In reality though, the kids who want to get faded before the dance are going to get faded.
Students either tried to guess who was going to get breathalyzed (the admin counted 8 people aloud in front of me and chose the eighth person) or simply snuck alcohol into the dance. If students didn’t want to go through all of that trouble, they popped pills, got high off of weed, or did some other drug that the administration can’t test.
One can argue how the fact of no one getting caught is a victory, but many students still got wasted and went to the dance.
I don’t want to condemn the use of breathalyzing at school dances; other schools do it and SLOHS needs to promote sobriety and safe driving. I just think that it instead encouraged the use of other drugs that could be even more dangerous than alcohol.