This past Monday, the Rutgers Young Americans for Liberty commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall by erecting their own symbolic wall on campus. Rutgers YAL member Aaron Williams and myself spent our Sunday constructing a 10 foot high wall which we put up on College Ave. early the next morning in a high traffic area, Brower Commons.

Student writing on the Berlin Wall replica at Rutgers University

Read the full story at Young Americans for Liberty website...

This past year the NJ Libertarian Party has utilized the services of a student Press Secretary. While this job does not pay, Rutgers recognizes this internship for college credits. Many other opportunities exist for freedom minded students.

Institute for Humane Studies

The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a unique organization that assists undergraduate and graduate students worldwide with an interest in individual liberty.They currently have three internship programs and two scholarships.

• The Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program includes a summer internship working on state or federal policy at one of more than 70 policy organizations plus two career workshops and weekly policy lectures.

As a senior at Allentown High School, I served as vice president of Life-Savers, a club dedicated to preventing student substance abuse. This year our Board of Education proposed a policy that would require students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities to submit to random urinalysis tests for illicit drug use. While I understand the desire to do more, I believe the policy will do more harm than good. My fellow students and I are organizing against this policy, which is ineffective, discounts student input, invades privacy and erodes trust.

This evening the Upper Freehold Township Board of Education held its second drug testing forum. As reported earlier the school board is investigating (with lots of prodding from the Feds) implementing a random drug screening of all high school students. The Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey, along with myself arranged to have a speaker present who could talk about the science behind drug testing. Dr. Steven Marcus gave a very intelligent discussion that contradicted much of what the board had been told earlier by Ms. Steffner, of the White House office of National Drug Control Policy.

In 2000, three principled youths, Shaun Joye, Melissa Greiner, and Anna Zdepski, refused a mandatory government school drug test based on libertarian beliefs. All three believed that they had the right not to be searched without due process. The administrators at Hunterdon cared little about their beliefs. They were thrown out of all school activities. Shaun had been working hard all year on the school play, his part was quickly given to someone else.

The effect of drug testing polices like this is that no libertarian minded youth shall be permitted to participate in extracurricular activities without compromising on their beliefs.

Recently Mike Gomba, a Senior at my town's High School (Allentown/Upper Freehold), wrote a letter to the editor arguing that suspicionless drug testing is a perfectly acceptable practice for society to embrace. He claims that “it is for our benefit, our safety”. He gives the common statist excuse that if you have nothing to hide then you should gladly give up your rights.

While I applaud his choice not to partake in drugs, I find his attitude sickening and immoral. Our Constitution defines the moral underpinnings of our nation. It was written not to grant us rights, rather it enumerate rights that are fundamental and existed prior to government.

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Examiner. It is reprinted here with Brendan Benedict's permission.