MARYLAND STUDENTS: EASE POT PENALTY

University of Maryland students celebrated student government election
results yesterday 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
yesterday afternoon, wearing a black suit and a "party organically"
T-shirt with a pot leaf. "The students have spoken!"

Not all 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 the
administration takes any strong message from student elections very
seriously. But 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 comes just as the school, which has enjoyed a growing
national reputation for its academics in recent years, also 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 of Maryland is the fifth university 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, cites statistics on all sorts of awful things that happen
to enormous numbers of college students as a result of drinking --
deaths, injuries, sexual assaults.

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 thinks the referendum results could hurt the school's image and the
atmosphere on campus if students start thinking they can get away with
smoking up 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.

Students caught with drugs at U-Md. 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 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, with about 35,000 students, 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 DARE classes. And
they see it as a moral issue.

He and Pinho, who head the U-Md. chapters of Students for Sensible
Drug Policy and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws, spent the beginning of this week tooling around campus in a
decorated campaign golf cart to get out the vote, offering students
rides, hemp bracelets and propaganda.

Pinho said this is just the beginning.

"Next stop," he said, "the White House!"