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THE GRASS IS GREENER IN KYUSHU

Kyushu Sangyo University, founded in Fukuoka City in 1960, is well known in
academic circles for its Faculty of Fine Arts, several graduates of which
have been recipients of the Ken Domon Award, Japan's most prestigious prize
for photography.

More recently, some KSU students were busted by the cops for possession of
illegal drugs. It seems that two years ago, about 20 individuals, including
Fine Arts students, were apprehended and charged with the illegal
possession or sale of cannabis sativa.

"Two groups were involved in illegal sales," a police source tells Yomiuri
Weekly. "We learned that one group had dealings with gangsters and we
started investigating them from summer of 2001. The investigation's still
ongoing, but one group has been smashed, and the other is as good as broken
up."

On the street, marijuana is said to go for from 3,000 yen to 5,000 yen per
gram. According to police, members of the KSU drug ring had allegedly set
up a cottage industry, growing pot on apartment verandas or in a large
patch out in the hills.

"It seems they began by growing it for their own consumption, but they
started peddling it to friends and the circle widened," the cop says.

Before long they were wholesaling a portion of their crop to local gangsters.

Yomiuri Weekly's story, however, is not just about drug busts, but about
what appears to be efforts by the university to cover its rump. On the
morning of June 14, a staffer from the student affairs section abruptly
called on the residence of a 20-year-old third-year Fine Arts student and
invited him to a nearby restaurant for breakfast.

"Do you know 'B'?" the staffer asked, naming a acquaintance. "He's been
arrested for possession of marijuana."

The student felt a chill run down his spine. He had purchased two reefers
from B for 3,000 yen a month earlier.

"If the media gets hold of this there will be hell to pay," the staffer
supposedly warned him. "I wanted you to know about the arrest. The
university wants to avoid any further arrests of its students."

Later the same day, the staffer is said to have phoned the student and
requested he keep their meeting a secret.

The student's reaction was to immediately discard his hash pipe and any
other paraphernalia that would implicate him. Nevertheless he was arrested
June 17.

Because B was arrested while on campus, he was the only one in the ring
whose arrest the institution knew of. The staff member's decision to
contact B's known associates suggest an attempt at damage control to
protect the school's reputation.

Not true, insists the head of the university's General Administration
Department, who explained his staffer's action by saying: "To the best of
his ability, he tried to counsel the student, who has had a poor
class-attendance record. There was no intention to cover anything up. The
staffer asked the student if he knew B, but there was never any attempt to
hush things up."

Yomiuri Weekly is skeptical. Isn't calling on a student's home to "advise"
against missing class just a little bit overprotective? Not to mention the
visit's timing. But hey, who are we to huff and puff over the complexities
of this form of "higher" education?