NO RIBBON FOR POT PROJECT

Belmont Eighth-Grader Claims Retaliation

Belmont eighth-grader Veronica Mouser may have won the battle to get her
project on medicinal marijuana entered in her school science fair last week,
but it did not place.

Mouser did not win a ribbon for her project examining possible medicinal
benefits of pot. She received only an acknowledgment as a ``participant'' at
the Ralston Middle School science fair, so her work won't go on to the
county or state competitions.

Veronica claimed that the unfavorable mark for her medicinal pot project was
retaliation for her widely publicized challenge to her principal, who
refused last month to let her enter the project at all. That decision was
eventually reversed, but not before a big investigation and a national media
spotlight on the dispute and the school.

``I don't think my project was judged fairly at all,'' Veronica said, adding
that a participant medal carries points equivalent to a ``D'' grade. ``I
thought it was judged poorly because of how I got to enter when they didn't
want me there in the first place. It was one of the things they were in
control of.''

But Assistant Superintendent Marcia Harter said the district deliberately
recruited three outside judges to evaluate Veronica's project and several
others in the fair to ensure fair and objective evaluations.

``Usually they're judged by a team of our own, but to be fair we decided
we'd have an outside team to judge a section that included Veronica's,'' she
said. ``Hers was not one of the projects that won a ribbon.''

Projects on viscosity, spices, cleanliness, light, nerves, fluid flow, the
greenhouse effect, eye color and SamTrans travel time won the top awards at
the Ralston fair and will move on to the bigger competitions.

Ralston has about 800 students enrolled in grades six to eight. School
officials said 246 projects were entered in the school science fair, and
nine -- three from each grade -- were awarded prizes. The winning entries
will go on to competition at the San Mateo County science fair.

Principal Deborah Ferguson initially said Veronica's project failed to meet
science fair guidelines for performing a scientific procedure. Because
marijuana is still illegal under federal law -- even though Californians
sanction it for medicinal use -- it would be a problem for an eighth-grader
to experiment on it, the school decided.

The undercurrent of concern was also the possibility that a project on
medicinal pot could be perceived as condoning drug use in an environment
where school officials are striving to battle drug use among teens and
enforce a no-tolerance policy.

But after school officials reviewed Veronica's work, and media flocked to
cover the story, Superintendent Anne Campbell allowed the project to be
entered in the fair. She determined that Veronica had conducted scientific
research by keeping a log of effects of pot on three medicinal marijuana
patients but did not use the weed herself or give it to any research
subjects.

The grand prize for eighth grade went to Becky Lent, whose project was
called ``Do Sizzling Spheres Sink Swiftly in a Syrupy Soup?'' and examined
whether heated objects move faster through dense liquids than cold objects.
Her project won the grand prize for eighth grade, but she said the crowds at
the fair surrounded Veronica's controversial medicinal pot display.