Tennessee Just Started Drug Testing Welfare Applicants
Applicants who test positive will have to go through treatment, and if they test positive again their benefits will be taken away.
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A new law that took effect this week in Tennessee will drug test state welfare applicants.
People who apply to the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, Families First, will have to answer three questions on a form about potential drug use in order to receive benefits. If they answer “yes” to any of the questions, they’ll be referred to urine testing. If they refuse to take the drug test, they won’t be able to get the benefits. If the test is positive, they’ll have to complete a treatment or recovery plan after a substance abuse evaluation. After that, the applicants will have to take another test, and if it comes back positive they will be cut off from welfare for six months.
“This law singles out limited-income people and requires them to submit to humiliating and intrusive searches of their bodily fluids because they need temporary help making ends meet,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.
Programs that drug test welfare applicants are misguided: recipients don’t use drugs at any higher rate than the general population. In Florida, in fact, just 2 percent of recipients failed drug tests in 2011, while 8 percent of the state’s residents use illegal drugs. In Utah, just 12 welfare recipients tested positive in the year after it enacted a drug testing requirement. In Minnesota, 0.4 percent of cash assistance recipients have felony drug convictions, compared to the state’s general population.
Instead, they play into untrue stereotypes that the poor are unwise with their money or their health. Maine’s governor tried to root out widespread abuse among the state’s beneficiaries, trying to prove they use their benefits to buy alcohol or cigarettes, and turned up next to nothing. Welfare recipients are actually more frugal than the general population, spending less of their budgets on eating out and entertainment and more on the necessities.
The programs also come with a hefty price, despite the fact that lawmakers often defend them as saving money on welfare benefits. Utah spent more than $30,000 to catch those 12 users. Virginia lawmakers rejected a similar proposal after realizing it would cost $1.5 million to operate while saving just $229,000. Any savings from Florida’s program will be negligible after administrative costs and reimbursing the people who took $30 tests.
And they face potential legal hurdles. A federal appeals court rejected Florida’s program, which made all applicants take drug tests and pay for them, withholding benefits from those who had positive results, as unconstitutional in February last year. Other programs have experienced similar legal setbacks.
At least eight states have passed similar laws to drug test welfare recipients, including Kansas and Mississippi.
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Arizona Professor Offers Extra Credit To Female Students Who Stop Shaving Their Armpits
Putting down your razor can lift your G.P.A. at Arizona State University.
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Putting down your razor can lift your G.P.A. at Arizona State University.
Professor Breanne Fahs offers female students extra-credit if they “stop shaving their legs and underarms for ten weeks during the semester while keeping a journal to document their experiences.” For Fahs, who teaches women and gender studies, the purpose is to get students thinking critically about societal norms and gender roles.
A similar opportunity is available to men in Fahs’ classes who recieve extra credit for shaving all of their hair from the neck down.
One student, Stephanie Robinson, described it as a “life-changing experience“:
Many of my friends didn’t want to work out next to me or hear about the assignment, and my mother was distraught at the idea that I would be getting married in a white dress with armpit hair. I also noticed the looks on faces of strangers and people around campus who seemed utterly disgusted by my body hair. It definitely made me realize that if you’re not strictly adhering to socially prescribed gender roles, your body becomes a site for contestation and public opinion.
Men seemed to have an easier time with it since some degree of “manscaping” has become accepted, or even expected.
The norm of women shaving body hair dates back to an effort by Gillette to expand their market for razors. Starting around 1915, Gillette started a campaign “denouncing the (previously inoffensive) female underarm hair as ‘unsightly’, ‘masculine’ and ‘unclean’.” In the 1920s, they expanded their efforts to leg hair, glamorizing “a smooth, silky leg.”
Still, “[b]efore the first world war, virtually no American woman shaved her legs. By 1964, 98% of women under the age of 44 did so.”
In 2010, Mo’Nique created a minor stir by appearing at the Golden Globes with unshaven legs. This year some celebrities, including Cameron Diaz, have been speaking out for more tolerance for women’s choices.
Fahs received an award from the American Psychological Association in recognition of her program and has been contacted by “faculty members at other universities are considering using the exercise in their classes.”
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