STIRRING THE POT

A marijuana-legalization group has joined the campaign against campus
drinking - sort of

Matt Bakalar says his parents told him they did not mind if he smoked
marijuana as long as he did not do anything stupid or get caught.

He got caught. In September, undercover police officers arrested him
outside a dormitory at the University of Maryland at College Park
after he bought an eighth of an ounce from a friend. Mr. Bakalar, a
freshman, spent 14 hours in jail, and the university eventually barred
him from campus housing.

Like many colleges, Maryland punishes students more severely for
illegal drug use than for underage drinking. Had Mr. Bakalar, 18, been
busted for sipping a beer instead of buying pot, he could have stayed
in his dorm. The university would only have required him to attend its
alcohol-education program.

Mr. Bakalar believes that discrepancy is unfair. This spring he gladly
voted for a student referendum that urged administrators to reduce the
penalties for marijuana smoking and possession, making them the same
as those for underage drinking. The proposal was the handiwork of
Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, a Denver-based nonprofit
group that seeks to legalize marijuana. The group, known as Safer, has
helped students organize and pass referenda at Maryland, Florida State
University, and three other colleges, and it hopes to prompt similar
votes on at least 20 other campuses next year.

The campaign has led some student sympathizers to publicize the
dangers of heavy drinking on their campuses. They argue that students
cannot die from smoking marijuana, as they can from abusing alcohol,
and that smoking pot causes far fewer disturbances than guzzling
booze. Why, they ask, impose lighter sentences for alcohol violations?

"Every day ... you can walk around the dorms, you can see the damage
done by drunk people," says Mr. Bakalar, who describes the broken
ceiling tiles and vomit-covered bathroom floors he has come upon after
a particularly rowdy night.

Administrators at Maryland are not bound by the referendum in which
Mr. Bakalar voted, however, and officials there and at other colleges
say they have no interest in changing the rules. Because smoking
marijuana is illegal, administrators say, they must punish students
who break the law.

"If we think somebody's dealing drugs from our residence halls," says
Mary B. Coburn, vice president for student affairs at Florida State,
"we don't want them there."

Building a Campaign

Enter Steve Fox. Executive director of Safer, he says college students
desperately need an education on the dangers of alcohol. And
proponents of legalizing marijuana, he believes, are just the people
to provide it.

According to a 2002 study commissioned by the National Institute of
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Task Force on College Drinking, among
college students ages 18 to 24, drinking contributes to an estimated
1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 sexual assaults or date
rapes each year.

Because universities with large student populations are particularly
prone to such incidents, Safer started its campaign at two prominent
state institutions. In March 2005, at the University of Colorado at
Boulder and Colorado State University at Fort Collins, the
organization got its referendum put to a vote for the first time, just
six months after alcohol-related student deaths had rocked both campuses.

At Boulder, 68 percent of the students who voted supported the
referendum; 58 percent did so at Colorado State. As is typical in
student elections, however, voter turnouts were low. At Boulder only
about 5,800 of some 30,000 students cast ballots.

Safer took its campaign to three other campuses this spring, working
with two other groups - the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. At each college,
one of the advocacy groups contacts student leaders and urges them to
include a referendum on the issue in a forthcoming student election.
The referendum asks students whether they agree that university
sanctions for student use and possession of marijuana should be no
greater than those for underage drinking.

Although the campaign has not resulted in any policy changes, Tom
Angell, campaigns director for Students for Sensible Drug Policy,
hopes that future votes will prompt administrators to re-examine their
penalties. He would like to see more colleges punish marijuana
violations internally.

Since marijuana is a controlled substance, university officials often
immediately call on local police departments to arrest students who
have been caught with it. By contrast, colleges typically do not
involve outside law-enforcement authorities for underage-drinking offenses.

Mr. Angell says turning students over to the criminal-justice system
for a first-time drug violation is unfair. A drug conviction, no
matter how minor, automatically strips students of their financial aid
because of a provision in the Higher Education Act. That penalty
alone, he says, can force students to drop out of college and put them
at much greater risk of substance abuse.

"Blocking access to education," says Mr. Angell, "makes our nation's
drug problem worse, not better."

'Change the Behavior'

Robert N. Maust, coordinator of Boulder's alcohol-education program,
says the Safer referendum appealed to students' sense of rebellion.
"It was," he says, "a very clever public-relations ploy by
nonstudents."

But he and other college officials say groups like Safer have
misunderstood campus policies.

At Boulder students who violate either the alcohol policy or drug
policy receive a one-year probation, during which they must enroll in
the university's alcohol- and drug-education programs or perform
community service, says Mr. Maust. A second violation while on
probation results in a one-semester suspension.

While university officials typically call local police for marijuana
violations, students caught with the drug are not necessarily barred
from university housing. "If you get kicked out of the housing and
you're still enrolled in the school, all we've done is moved you off
campus," Mr. Maust says. "It hasn't changed your behavior."

Linda M. Clement, Maryland's vice president for student affairs, says
the penalties for alcohol and marijuana do differ at her institution,
but for good reasons.

For a first-time offense for marijuana use, a student is suspended for
one year and removed from university housing. The student can avoid
suspension by pledging good behavior for the next two years and
undergoing drug testing in a substance-abuse program through the
campus health center.

"Our first response," says Ms. Clement, "is always education to change
the behavior."

For a second marijuana offense, the penalty is automatic suspension
for one year.

For first offenses for underage drinking, the university refers
students to its alcohol-education program. For a second alcohol
violation, a student loses university housing.

"We consider the issue of drugs ... a potentially more dangerous
situation" than that of alcohol, Ms. Clement says, "because with drugs
and with distribution of drugs typically comes a criminal element."

Crime and Punishment

That perception may prove difficult to change, regardless of how many
students support the Safer campaign.

Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, executive director of the National Association
of Student Personnel Administrators, applauds the student activists
who have worked on the referenda for their civic engagement, but
wonders if they are being used by national groups with larger agendas.

"Students get on the bandwagon for anything that looks like a
civil-rights" issue, she says.

For Mr. Bakalar, the Maryland student who was arrested for purchasing
pot, the issue is personal. A Prince George's County judge put him on
probation and sentenced him to 24 hours of community service. Mr.
Bakalar, his parents, and his lawyer also attended a university
hearing, in which he learned he could avoid suspension if he
participated in the drug-testing program.

Although students who are caught with illegal drugs are to be
immediately barred from their dorms, a graduate student assigned to
investigate Mr. Bakalar's case was sympathetic. He helped Mr. Bakalar,
an honors student who studies computer engineering, stay on the campus
for the fall semester. After that, the freshman moved into an
off-campus apartment for the spring.

Since December Mr. Bakalar has had to call the student health center
every Monday and Thursday to see whether he needs to take a random
drug test that day. "It's a hassle," he says. "It's also kind of
humiliating."

Nonetheless, what he describes as a "draconian" punishment may not
change his behavior in the way Maryland officials might have hoped.
The only lesson he learned from the experience, he says, is that he
should be more careful the next time he smokes pot. Mr. Bakalar says
he might do just that as soon as the university halts its drug testing
for the summer.