Nation digest 12/30/02

Study: Random drug tests effective in schools

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows.

The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not.

Of the 135 athletes subject to the random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, versus 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton.

They also were three times less likely to use performance-enhancing substances like steroids, according to the survey responses, which were confidential.

The study, conducted during the 1999-2000 school year, was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the National Institutes of Health. The results are published in next month's Journal of Adolescent Health.

Massachusetts sees rise in homeless students

BOSTON -- Some suburban school districts have seen a sharp increase in number of homeless students as the state moves homeless families into motels because of the lack of affordable housing.

The Department of Transitional Assistance is using motels as temporary housing because the state's family shelters are filled to capacity. The number of families in motels has jumped from 94 two years ago to 557 this month.

Districts say the policy is unfair to both schools and students. Many students are sent to a new school, make new friends, only to be pulled out and moved before the end of the year. And districts are forced to pick up the cost of educating them.

"Whenever you are welcoming that many youngsters in for a short period of time, it taxes the efforts of the people who are there who are trying to do the right thing," Tewksbury superintendent Christine McGrath told the Boston Globe.

Slain woman's parents go after Internet brokers

NASHUA, N.H. -- In the days after his stepdaughter's murder, Tim Remsburg funneled his fury into phone calls to anyone he thought might help explain her death.

"At two o'clock in the morning, I was trying to get President Clinton's number. I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to rattle everyone's cages and get some answers," he said.

His stepdaughter, Amy Boyer, was 20 when she was shot to death Oct. 15, 1999, by a former high school classmate, Liam Youens, who had paid an Internet information broker to track her down.

For the three years since the murder, her parents have fought to protect other potential victims, most recently by suing the broker for negligence and invasion of privacy.

Boyer and Youens graduated from Nashua High School in 1997. Though her family says she never knew him, Youens had an obsession for Boyer that went back to junior high.

The infatuation was chronicled on a Web site where Youens described his murder plot in gruesome detail.

-- From wire reports