Pubdate: Sun, 16 Apr 2006
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2006 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Susan Kinzie, Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)

STUDENT VOTE TO REDUCE PENALTIES FOR MARIJUANA MAY GO UP IN SMOKE IN MD.

WASHINGTON -- University of Maryland students celebrated student
government election results last week with a bottle of bubbly --
nonalcoholic, of course -- and a freshman broke into a mellow Phish
sort of victory dance.

Not only had they elected new student leaders, but nearly two-thirds
of the undergraduates who voted endorsed a referendum to reduce
penalties for students caught with marijuana so that they would be
treated the same as alcohol violations -- a result with much symbolic
weight but no actual power to change the school's policies.

"We are pumped," said senior and campaign activist Damien Nichols on
Thursday afternoon, wearing a black suit and a "party organically"
T-shirt with a marijuana leaf. "The students have spoken!"

Not all of the students; not even 4,500 of the more than 25,000
undergraduates voted on the student government association election
ballot question.

The university's vice president for student affairs said that the
administration takes any strong message from student elections very
seriously, but that she doesn't think the school will be able to treat
drug and alcohol violations the same way.

"You've got to look at these two issues differently," Linda Clement
said, because marijuana can bring harder drugs, dealers, and crime.
"Our campus police believe very strongly that drug activity attracts
people to the campus who are dangerous."

The vote occurred just as the school, which has enjoyed a growing
national reputation for its academics in recent years, is fighting off
the bad publicity that postgame student riots have brought. Last week,
drunken students celebrated the women's basketball national
championship win by setting fires and shaking buses in College Park.

The university is the fifth in the country to pass a referendum like
this, part of a year-old campaign to promote marijuana as a safer
alternative to alcohol.

Steve Fox, executive director of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable
Recreation, gave statistics on all sorts of awful things that happen
to enormous numbers of college students as a result of drinking --
deaths, injuries, sexual assaults.

The SAFER campaign started at the University of Colorado and Colorado
State University after two students died after drinking. This year,
two other schools, the University of Texas and Florida State
University, passed similar referendums.

And none of those schools have changed their policies.

Gwendolyn Dungy, executive director of the National Association of
Student Personnel Administrators, laughed when she heard about the
vote. She doesn't know of any college in the country that treats drug
and alcohol violations the same -- mostly because of the law, she
said, because, unlike smoking marijuana, drinking is legal after 21.

Many on campus hadn't heard about the ballot question. Some were
shocked when they did. "I think it's absolutely ridiculous if you're
at college and you're smoking marijuana," freshman Dane Friedman said.

He said the referendum results could hurt the school's image and the
atmosphere on campus if students start thinking they can get away with
smoking marijuana all the time.

College administrators across the country have been trying for decades
to find solutions to the sometimes ridiculous, sometimes annoying,
sometimes tragic problems that drinking and drugs bring to campus.

Smoke-ins at the University of Maryland in the 1970s gave way in the
1980s to a much stricter policy, put in place after basketball star
Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. That's when administrators set
the rules in place today, which John Zacker of the university's
student misconduct office said are more severe than at many other schools.

Students caught with drugs at the University of Maryland face a
one-year suspension, depending on the circumstances, and those who
live in campus housing almost always are forced to move out, he said.

The university does offer some alternatives, including education and
ongoing drug testing, rather than suspension, to give students with
minor offenses a chance to learn from their mistakes.

Students are much less likely to get suspended or to lose housing for
alcohol violations, Zacker said. Those who do often have other
violations along with drinking.

The school has hundreds of liquor violations every year and fewer than
100 drug violations, he said.

Nichols and Victor Pinho, a fellow advocate, are part of the
generation that grew up with the "war on drugs" and Drug Abuse
Resistance Education classes. And they see it as a moral issue.

"The average marijuana user does not have the impetus to stand on a
sofa and scream, 'Legalize marijuana!' " said Nichols, a government
and politics major from Bowie, Md., who, like Pinho, has a job lined
up when he graduates this spring. "It's easier to live their life and
do their own thing."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake