SESSION DID LITTLE TO ERASE MARKET FOR MARIJUANA

Organizers said it wasn't a shaming session, though that's what it
sounded like to me.

Ten clean-cut students were caught dealing marijuana in the area near
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and here they were getting an
earful at a public meeting as part of their rehabilitation.

The neighborhood was fed up and terrified because the drugs and money
had attracted armed robberies and home invasions by more hardened criminals.

These student dealers found themselves lined up and facing the
audience and television cameras in the auditorium at Columbia St.
Mary's Hospital last week.

In a refreshing break from the usual and futile war on drugs, the
criminal justice system is trying a new approach. It's telling these
dealers they have to clean up their act in exchange for avoiding the
consequences of the felony charges against them.

At the so-called call-in session, only people chosen ahead of time
were allowed to speak. One neighbor called the dealers liars but
invited them over for coffee sometime. Another said they were lucky
to avoid prison. The district attorney, a police captain and even the
mayor lectured the students about straightening out. The dealers did not speak.

Joan Christopherson-Schmidt, a 78-year-old retired teacher who still
subs in Milwaukee classrooms, came away from the meeting with an
uneasy feeling.

"I was a little disappointed in the fact that there was not enough
time for the audience to speak to these young men," she said. "We
condemn, but we don't give them hope, a solution, and try to find out
why it happened."

Nobody asked the question she had for the dealers: "How do you think
you got here, and can we work to prevent having you feel that way again?"

"I watched the faces. They weren't being reached, I could tell," Joan told me.

So she hustled up on stage when the meeting ended and tried to engage
the young guys in conversation, the face-to-face way she's reached so
many students over the years.

She asked one student about his home life, but the guy's mother
quickly pulled him away. "How could I do anything? He was 19," the
mother said to her. "We don't want to talk to you."

Joan approached another student, who said he was from Shorewood and
wanted to be a counselor someday.

TV and newspaper cameras pressed in while the two spoke. "This is a
new beginning for you. You have the power to change the ending," she told him.

It's funny what you say when time is short. She told him to eat a
bowl of oatmeal every morning. "He smiled and said, "I do eat breakfast.' "

I would argue that most of the negatives surrounding marijuana come
not from the drug itself, but from its prohibition and the crime
fueled by the huge underground market for it. That's certainly been
true near UWM, and taking these 10 sellers out of the game changes
nothing about the high demand for pot that will be filled.

Joan said she gets high from watching the sun come up on another day
full of life's possibilities. She has never tried marijuana.

"I have such a hard time understanding why we as people, why
students, plan for getting drunk on weekends," she said.

It's like they're trying to tell us something, and she wants to know what it is.