Make the grade without Adderall
In a day and age where the difference of a tenth of a point on a student’s grade point average can make or break their entrance to the university of their choice or even the opportunity to interview with a prestigious company, it goes without saying that students live under tremendous pressure to achieve the highest GPA they possibly can.
As a result of this pressure, it is no surprise SMU students seek and attain any and all resources that will afford them a competitive advantage within the statutes of the SMU Honor Code. This of course entitles students to take advantage of resources provided by the university as well as off-campus resources such as libraries, tutors and Adderall.
Adderall?
For those of you who don’t know what Adderall is, it’s a prescription drug taken primarily but not exclusively by people who have Attention Deficit Disorder. Attention Deficit Disorder, which is also referred to as ADD, is a disorder which impairs a person’s ability to concentrate on one thing or task for extended periods of time.
For students diagnosed with ADD, this impairment significantly handicaps their ability to learn in a classroom setting and their ability to study long hours at a time for exams or write term papers like their fellow classmates. Because of this, students who are diagnosed with ADD are prescribed Adderall to reduce the effects of the disorder by temporarily strengthening their ability to concentrate. This reduction levels the playing field for students with ADD who are competing for grades with students who do not.
However, the reason for writing this article is not to inform you why Adderall “levels the playing field” for students with ADD, but to expose student abuse of Adderall who don’t suffer from ADD to gain an unfair competitive advantage over others.
During my three years at SMU, it has come to my attention that students who do not have ADD have been exploiting the disadvantage of students with ADD by taking Adderall to chemically enhance their concentration, therefore enabling those students to study more efficiently and increase their chances of a higher grade over students who don’t take Adderall.
Even though the SMU Honor Code does not specifically ban this blatant exploitation, I feel it is unethical for students who do not have ADD to take Adderall.
Students who don’t have ADD but take Adderall to strengthen their ability to concentrate strongly parallel athletes who use performance enhancing steroids. Both steroids and Adderall have medically legitimate purposes. Steroids are typically used to speed up recovery time after surgery while Adderall reverses the effects of ADD. Despite this, both are abused to increase an individual’s chances of high scores whether it be in athletic competition or academic grades.
What could be done to stop Adderall abuse?
Unlike most athletic leagues such as the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball, which have banned their athletes from using steroids, SMU has not specifically banned the use of Adderall by students who don’t have ADD.
Does this mean SMU should have a rule banning this abuse, and if this happened, how would SMU possibly enforce the rule? If implemented, you could imagine walking into a classroom before a test only to be met by medical personnel, cloaked in white clothing, randomly taking blood samples to check for Adderall usage.
What if SMU didn’t ban the usage of Adderall, but instead condoned it? If so, could you imagine a day where students who have ADD and students who don’t have ADD and don’t take Adderall receive five extra points on their final average in all their classes in an attempt to take away the advantage of the students who don’t have ADD but take Adderall. Are these solutions even realistic?
No. Even though I feel Adderall abuse is unethical and an unfortunate exploitation of students who have ADD, there isn’t any course of action to stop this abuse that isn’t radical in nature or tremendously expensive. For this reason, the best course of action, unfortunately, is no course of action.
Instead, I feel there is a need for greater ethical awareness within the SMU student community about Adderall abuse. So my only recommendation to my fellow students is this: the next time you sit down to study, do it the old fashion way . . . without Adderall.
