MAJORING IN MARIJUANA, FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES

Oakland, Calif. - The campus tour began promptly at 3 p.m. and was attended
by a fairly
typical cast of characters. There was an affable, out-of-work engineer
looking to study for a new profession; a long-haired youngster all but
quivering with the certainty that he had found his collegiate "perfect
fit"; and, with him, a well-barbered elderly man who hovered nearby
looking taciturn but not unsupportive.

"I'm the grandfather, along for the ride," the man explained once the
group was inside the main campus building, his tone of voice conveying
a remarkable neutrality considering that, at the moment, he was
surrounded by potted marijuana plants. "I wanted to make sure that
this was all," he paused, "legitimate."

"He's worried about me," said the teenager with a sigh, speaking over
the buzz of several high-pressure-sodium grow lamps. To which his
elder replied, lovingly but firmly, "I thought that was a
grandfather's prerogative."

For those of you who are just catching up to the tour: Welcome to the
marijuana horticulture lab at Oaksterdam University, a local
institution dedicated to providing "quality training for the cannabis
industry." Or, if you like, the booming cannabis industry.

With the expansion of medical-marijuana laws in 14 states in recent
years, a minor profusion of self-declared "cannabis colleges" has
sprouted up, offering training to the tides of people hoping to work
in the sector now that it is gaining legitimacy. Oaksterdam, which
offers both weekend seminars and semester-long courses, bills itself
as the first of the lot. It is also probably the most
high-minded.

Founded by marijuana-legalization activists in 2007, Oaksterdam-a
mashup of Oakland and Amsterdam (a city famous for its hashish
cafes)-has always been part trade school, part political stunt. While
offering earnest classes on the basics of running legal marijuana
franchises under California law, it also offers a cheeky appropriation
of the vast cultural capital that American society affords to the
likes of the Ivy League. The Oaksterdam seal is a burlesque of
Harvard's, with "ve-ri-tas" replaced with "can-na-bis," and the laurel
leaves surrounding the shield replaced with-care to take a guess?
Oaksterdam's John Harvard is a wheelchair-using Texan named Richard
Lee, a stalwart of the legalization movement since the 1990s. Thanks
to him, alongside fliers that mention classes on "bud tending" and
"edibles," the campus entryway is dominated by images of prisoners
locked up on marijuana convictions-"The Reason Why We Fight," the
placards say. Other posters advertise Mr. Lee's unprecedented
initiative to tax and regulate commercial (not just medical)
marijuana, a measure that will appear on the California state ballot
this November.

But the real genius of Oaksterdam may lie in the realization that
running a respectable trade school-with all the attendant talk of
excellence, quality, and standards-is in itself a potently subversive
political act. People have been making a living in the marijuana
business for decades, but the careers of dealers, smugglers, and
guerrilla growers have been defined by deviance and its obscure
rituals. In contrast, there's a powerful social signaling effect that
goes along with handing in an application, showing up for lectures,
taking tests, and attending labs. It says: This is normal.

"That's the gateway theory," said Mr. Lee one recent morning, leaning
his wheelchair back precariously against the wall of Oaksterdam's main
lecture hall. "It's not pharmacological, it's sociological." Marijuana
doesn't lead to hard drugs and crime because of anything inherent in
the plant, as one hoary version of the drug-gateway theory holds; it
sometimes leads to hard drugs and crime because that's been the
shadowy social context that surrounds its production and distribution,
he argued.

Oaksterdam, then, is all about building new, professionalized gateways
to a well-lit, legitimate future. But in the rapidly shifting legal
landscape surrounding marijuana, it's still not exactly clear where
those gateways will lead.

Throughout the campus tour, the long-haired teenager clutched a
beat-up green file folder that contained his completed Oaksterdam
application. He made occasional, knowing jokes about pot that seemed
designed to impress the campus tour guide, and he seemed genuinely
anxious about getting in-even though Oaksterdam has a more or less
open admissions policy.

Once upon a time, the teenager said, he had contemplated pursuing a
degree in horticulture, maybe at the University of California at
Davis. Then he found out about Oaksterdam, and all that changed. "I
was convinced it was the best road for me to go down," he said with
college-essay confidence, "and here I am."

Growing Business

Oaksterdam may be a university only notionally, but at a time when
most colleges are lucky if they can tread water, it has grown rapidly.
Its main branch opened in a cafe-sized storefront in 2007 and moved to
a department-store-sized space a year later. This year it moved yet
again, to a 30,000-square-foot converted office building. And
satellite campuses have opened in Los Angeles; Sebastopol, Calif.; and
Flint, Mich.

The college also recently expanded its roster of academic departments.
They now include horticulture, political science, biology,
"canna-business," and "methods of ingestion."

Mr. Lee took a break from his usual business that morning to sign a
stack of diplomas due to be awarded on the Los Angeles campus. The
stacks are growing in step with the university. "It started off as a
political thing," he said of Oaksterdam, "and then it turned into a
business."

Oaksterdam is not an accredited institution (its Web site helpfully
makes clear that course credits are nontransferable), and it's hard to
imagine its ever becoming one. After all, just growing the amount of
marijuana that quivers under the lights in the university's
horticulture lab is grounds for a federal felony conviction.

The federal government, which still officially regards cannabis as a
dangerous drug, has sent signals that it will not prosecute citizens
who are playing by their own states' medical-marijuana rules. But
because of the gulf between state and federal laws, most established
institutions still refuse to have anything to do with medical pot. The
gray areas of medical marijuana are still very gray.

When someone on the tour finally asked the grandfather what he really
thought of his grandson's going to Oaksterdam, the older man paused
for a moment to think. "Well, I'm up in the air," he finally said.

"You never know where your life is going to take you. You never know
what's going to happen."

He was worried about the discrepancy between state and federal law but
sensed that the tide had turned against prohibition. "If it all goes
the way I think it might in the future, and he gets in at the ground
level-and he doesn't become a pothead," the grandfather said, "then I
think he could make a good living." After a while he added: "He's
gonna be 18 here, and he's gonna do what he wants anyway."

A few minutes later, the young man-in a baggy T-shirt that showed
Einstein writing "E = mc [squared]" on a blackboard-walked up to the main
reception desk at Oaksterdam and nervously handed in his application.
Not sure if he would make the cut, he hovered by the desk until a
secretary assured him that he had a seat in this semester's class.