April showers bring May flowers, and the next week will bring final exams and projects to the SMU campus.

With any large amount of tests administered over a relatively short period of time, some students will try anything to improve their grades, including, but not limited to, the wonder-drug Adderall.

This semester, the administration is taking notice.

Walk into Fondren Library or Hughes-Trigg and you will encounter new signs that question “Adderall or Have it All?”

The signs go on to state that possessing Adderall without a prescription can trigger judicial action similar to that provoked by possession of cocaine.

Cocaine? Let’s pause for just a moment and think back to the last time you encountered an “Adderall whore” on Harry Hines.

Ed Board wonders when amphetamines such as Adderall and Ritalin became the enemy.

Last time we checked, Adderall was improving GPAs and confidence across the nation for students suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The negative feelings are not limited to SMU administrators, however.

A recent CNN.com poll found that 6,243 of 8,262 voters – or 76 percent – felt that ADHD is over-diagnosed. Over-diagnosing ADHD presumably leads to over-prescribing Adderall, which brings us back to the core of the issue.

A student with ADD or ADHD entering the library to study for finals –like a good little Mustang – is immediately faced with the public bashing of something that may have saved their GPA.

This is comparable to someone with a pounding headache entering a health center seeking Tylenol or Aspirin, only to be greeted with a warning: “You’re taking Aspirin? How dare you!”

When administrators are concocting such anti-Adderall campaigns (remember the pompous airheads in the Department of Residence Life and Student Housing tried the same scare-tactics, unsuccessfully, with door-hangers in February?) Ed Board doubts they consider students, members of the same campus community no doubt, who actually rely on amphetamines to remain at par with those who do not suffer from ADD or ADHD.

Ed Board would like to remind the fierce studiers out there that, despite what the signs may suggest, Adderall is not an axis of evil.

Taken without a prescription, sure, that may lead to some adverse side effects; but just because a student takes Adderall does not mean they are deserving of the reputation of a cokehead.