RANKING A RESULT OF MORE ENFORCEMENT, NOT MORE USE

Congratulations, Iowa, You Are No. 1.

Your ranking isn't in the latest AP basketball poll, nor in any academic
regards, but in drug arrests. Last year, the UI had 205 drug arrests, more
than any other public school with more than 28,000 students.

According to a report issued by the Chronicle of Higher Education, in 2000,
the UI was first among the five public universities that had more than 125
drug arrests, ringing up 205. Penn State was a distant second at 175.

This does not mean that the UI is, or has become, a haven for drug
activity. The No. 1 ranking is a direct result of an increase in reporting
and a concentration of law enforcement on students at the UI.

Administrators and student leaders alike are questioning the university's
apparent drug problem. On Jan. 25, news reports quoted Chuck Green, the UI
assistant vice president for Public Safety, as saying, "A common
misconception is that increased arrests must mean increased drug sales."
Dan Rossi, the vice president of the UI Student Government, said he doubted
whether drug use on campus has increased.

According to statistics published by Public Safety, the university's 205
drug arrests were accumulated from 46 residence hall violations, 81
non-housing campus-property violations, and 78 public-property violations.
Out of the 205 drug violations that put the UI in the lead, only 62 percent
of those were on campus; the remaining 38 percent were violations adjacent
to and accessible from the campus.

The university has 54 campus police for a student population of
approximately 28,700. Penn State, which came in second in the study,
employs four fewer campus police for a student body 40 percent larger than
the UI's. Michigan State University, which came in third, employs six more
campus police for a student body 46 percent larger than the UI's.

Combine the UI's 54 campus police with the average number of Iowa City
police officers downtown on a weekend night, and the chances of anything
illegal getting busted are pretty high.

The City Council may believe that the UI has a drinking problem. Certain
restaurant patrons may believe that the UI has a smoking problem, but what
the university does not have is a drug problem. What the school does have
is a concentrated number of police and Public Safety officials targeting
students for the sole reason that they are students. Had the other schools
in the study been subject to the same ratio of campus police to students as
the UI, the results would have been drastically different.