By Chrissy Payne
Round Table reporter

The other night I was watching television with my Dad, and as he was flipping through the channels, he stopped on the one that airs the Frederick County school board meetings. The new members of the board were attending their first official meeting. One of them was Brad Young, who had been tied to a controversy in the summer of 2009 for an alcohol incident that happened when he was the head softball coach at Walkersville High School.

During this board meeting, the new board members acted on issues that were not on the original agenda. As I watched, it appeared to me that the new member of the school board had one thing on his mind, and that was to abolish the FCPS student alcohol policy.

Seeing this sudden agenda change made sense. Given his prior issues with the current policy, why wouldn’t he want to do away with it? But as a high school student, I didn’t understand who would agree with this.

The alcohol policy is put in place to keep athletes from using alcohol and drugs and participating in activities that involve both.  The hope is that students won’t take the chance of being caught so that the may continue to participate in games.

Many would think that this a positive way to enforce the policy, and as a student, I don’t understand why any adult, especially a board member, would want this policy to be abolished.

I’ve seen students have to sit out because of the alcohol policy. It seems that most students sit out for the required 20 percent of the season, and that’s the last time they violate the policy.

The way I see it, without the student alcohol policy, students have one less thing holding them back when it comes to making decisions about alcohol and drugs.

The student alcohol policy should be kept in FCPS.  One person’s problems with it in the past doesn’t mean it should be done away with forever.