OFFICIAL: POT CRACKDOWN PROBABLY COMING

Ohio University's vice president for student affairs said recently
that while plans to revise OU discipline rules for student drug
offenses are still a work in progress, he's pretty sure that when a
draft of the new policy is unveiled next spring, it will include
stronger penalties for marijuana violations.

"Yes, and I think I need to be honest about that," Kent Smith told
The Athens NEWS in a mid-December interview. "I'll put it to you this
way -- I would be very surprised if we ended up with the same policy
we have right now, as far as sanctions."

Under current disciplinary policy, Smith noted, "you can receive a
harsher penalty for an alcohol violation than for a marijuana
violation. And that, in my view, is wrong."

OU has already made changes in its Student Code of Conduct regarding
penalties for alcohol offenses. It is now considering parts of the
student code that deal with drug offenses including those involving
marijuana.

The OU administration earlier this year asked Student Senate to offer
input on what its members thought any new drug discipline policy
should look like.

Senate brought forth a resolution last month, calling for more
consistent sanctions, and a greater focus on education in the new
policy.

Among the concrete suggestions in the resolution, Senate would like
to see the penalty for a first offense of less than 100 grams of pot
be three to six months of probation and a mandatory drug education
class, and a second violation carry an automatic one year of probation.

OU senior Stephanie Pleli is a member of Students Defending Students,
a group that weighed in critically on the earlier changes to OU's
alcohol policies.

Pleli said Friday that many students would like to see any new drug
policy be clearer and more consistent than the current one, making
the basis for each type of disciplinary charge more explicit, and
allowing for finer distinctions between more and less serious
offenses based on the facts of each individual case.

"The problem with a lot of the charges is, they're very vague, the
way the Student Code of Conduct is written," Pleli maintained. "What
we would like is to have a distinction within sanctions. For example,
possession of (drug) paraphernalia should not be an 'A' charge,
ever." (OU uses a letter scale for different levels of charges, with
an A-level offense being more serious than a B-level offense.)

Pleli said she also would like to see professional counselors brought
more into the disciplinary process, to make decisions on appropriate
sanctions in cases where students are found to have serious
substance-abuse problems.

"Part of our resolution was that we would talk to the university
about hiring a chemical-dependency counselor," she explained. "We
thought it would be helpful, if it's a more serious charge that a
person would be going to court for, they should see a dependency
counselor, and the counselor would decide what kind of sanction to
impose... They would be able to assess that better than judiciaries
would."

Smith insisted that his seeking student input is more than just
window dressing, and that the suggestions of the students will carry
real weight in the writing of the new policy.

"I can tell you, I'm going to take their input very seriously, and
that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to them first, because
this was going to have a big impact on them policy-wise," Smith said.

This quarter, Smith said, he will forward Student Senate's
recommendations to OU's Review and Standards Committee, a standing
committee that includes faculty, staffers and students.

After that group adds its input, a draft plan will be unveiled for
further public feedback, with the aim being to have the plan adopted
and implemented by fall 2007.

Smith said he thinks Student Senate is on the right track with its
emphasis on education. "Definitely the students feel strongly about
the educational side of the policy, and actually, I'm in agreement
with that," he said. "There will be an educational component to this."

The official said he doesn't necessarily agree with some critics that
the current policy is hard to understand, "but if students are saying
it's confusing, we need to make every effort to make it clear."

In a Student Senate discussion of the planned policy changes in
November, one student senator argued that there are significant
differences between marijuana and alcohol, and that it might not be
appropriate to make the disciplinary policies for the two drugs
"congruent."

Smith, however, said he believes OU must take pot violations
seriously, regardless of whatever differences in effect may exist
among different drugs, because using or possessing marijuana is still
a crime.

"As an educational entity, and as a public institution, we should
follow the laws of the land," he argued. "And at this point, the law
says that this is an illegal substance. And we have to teach young
people to obey the laws of the land."

OU faced some resistance from students when it tightened up its
alcohol policy, and ended up backing off slightly from some of the
increased penalties it had originally called for.

Under the new alcohol policy, which went into effect last May,
students arrested or written up for any alcohol-related offense get
an automatic six-month probation.

If a student commits a second alcohol offense in that six month's
time, no matter how minor the offense, he or she faces automatic
suspension (except in "extenuating circumstances," which are not
spelled out in the policy).

Underage freshmen and sophomores who break alcohol rules have letters
sent home to their parents or guardians. All cases are referred to OU
Judiciaries, even if the offense takes place off-campus, and
offenders must submit to an alcohol audit to determine what kind of
alcohol educational program they must undergo.