The Division III Presidents Council has voted to establish a pilot drug-education and testing program during the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years. Our purpose is to help all Division III institutions evaluate the long-term role that education and testing might play in ensuring the well-being of our student-athletes and more equitable competition.

We reached this decision after a lengthy and thoughtful debate. As presidents of institutions of higher education, our natural inclination is to emphasize the power of information in the decision-making process for our student-athletes. The significance of strong education programs cannot be minimized, although in 2005, only 50 percent of Division III schools reported that they conducted drug- and alcohol-education programs and the median expenditure was $1,000. Many presidents felt that alcohol was a much greater problem than drugs on their campuses. Accordingly, the Presidents Council voted to substantially enhance alcohol-, tobacco- and other drug-education programming through two existing NCAA grant programs, the CHOICES grant and the NCAA health and safety speakers grant.

Moreover, the Presidents Council decided that member schools needed to commit substantially more focus and funding on education about drugs and that a voluntary pilot program of drug testing was necessary to gather more information about the challenges facing Division III student-athletes. The need for testing was powerfully and persuasively expressed by our own students serving on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. We were told in no uncertain terms that the use of performance-enhancing and street drugs was a real problem and that education by itself was not enough. We were also strongly encouraged by President Myles Brand, who offered to match dollar for dollar the first $250,000 of Division III funds expended on an enhanced program of education and drug testing.

My own school — Christopher Newport University — and about 13 percent of all Division III schools already have drug-testing programs. For three years, CNU has implemented a successful drug-testing program that combines many elements of the proposed NCAA program. We embarked on that course not because we identified a drug problem with our athletes but because we wanted to define the culture of  our athletics program; respond actively to the growing national trend of alcohol and drug use on college campuses; exercise our responsibility for helping our student-athletes make good decisions on and off the playing field; and set a positive example for the rest of the university.

Participation in the Division III pilot program is voluntary. We hope that 100 schools will choose to participate, and every effort will be made to ensure that those schools are broadly representative of our rich array of 439 colleges and universities.

Pilot institutions will receive $1,000 annually to support expanded and enhanced drug-education programs. Moreover, 16 to 20 athletes at each school will be tested for performance-enhancing and street drugs during the academic year. On request, institutions will receive a report on the aggregate data from the drug tests conducted on their campuses, but individual results will not be reported and there will be no sanctions for a positive test.

Aggregate results will be reported semi-annually, by sport, to the Division III membership. Over the two years of the pilot program, we will gather important information to guide our future decisions as we compare data from those 100 schools to the experience of schools only doing drug-education programs and to those that are doing nothing.

Now is the time to put the Division III pilot program into action. We hope schools will embrace the opportunity to enhance drug-education programming and through the voluntary testing program to provide the data necessary to improve our efforts in ensuring the well-being of our student-athletes and more equitable competition.