Pubdate: Wed, 15 Feb 2006
Source: Harvard Crimson (MA Edu)
Copyright: 2006, The Harvard Crimson, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/794
Author:  Elizabeth M. Doherty
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1791/a04.html?292096

HALF-BAKED  AT HARVARD

While The Rules Seem Tough On Paper, Harvard May Actually Be - Or At 
Least Has Been - A Toker's Paradise

The newcomer walked in to the party and took his place among the 
throng of unsuspecting first-years. After asking the hosts to turn 
down the music, he then  said that he'd need their alcohol. An 
awkward way to ask for a drink, perhaps.

The party's host, Mark, a current sophomore who asked FM to keep his 
name private because he does not want to be associated with the 
event, didn't  think much of the odd visitor at first. Reaching into 
his desk, Mark says he  then took out a bag of marijuana. That was 
enough for the visitor, who then  asked Mark to cut the music. This 
mysterious partygoer was shutting this party  down. He was a freshman proctor.

Mark feared strict disciplinary action.  He soon found himself in 
front of then- Assistant Dean of Freshman Wendy E.F.  Torrance and 
awaited his punishment: writing a letter explaining that he 
understood Harvard's policy on illegal drugs. Torrance then allegedly 
told him  not to do it again.

A November 14, 2005 Crimson article entitled  "Harvard Rarely 
Punishes Student Drug Use"  described a lenient atmosphere  towards 
drug enforcement at Harvard that mirrored Mark's encounter with the 
administration. The article argues that students are unlikely to face 
the  administrative board for simply smoking marijuana or drinking 
underage. But  according to Assistant Dean of Harvard College and 
Administrative Board  Secretary John "Jay"  L. Ellison, Harvard's 
policy "is much more strict than the  article implies."

Two months after that article was published, it was  revealed that 
the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spent three weeks 
tracking a group of students in DeWolfe, who were subsequently 
arrested for the  alleged possession of marijuana with intent to 
distribute. And while the three  charged students now have to deal 
with the courts, they will also have to deal  with an administration 
that, in recent history, has had a less punitive response  to 
allegations of drug use.

Good Trips & Bad Vibes

Harvard  Square was a hotbed for drug dealers and experimenters in 
the 1960s, and  according to a March 1965 Crimson story, 
then-Middlesex Superior Court Justice  Frank W. Tomasello alleged 
that institutions like Harvard were to blame.  "Tax-free 
institutions,"  he said during the 1965 sentencing of an accused 
19  year-old drug dealer, "should screen out those they let in."

Dana L.  Farnsworth, then-director of University Health Services, 
reacted in The Crimson.  "Perhaps a few more people than usual are 
experimenting with drugs."

The  University responded to criticism by sending drug users to 
psychiatrists or  putting them on probation. But then-Dean of the 
College John U. Monro '34 struck  a harder line. "In sum,"  The 
Crimson reported he wrote in a letter to the  freshman class, "if a 
student is stupid enough to misuse his time here fooling  around with 
illegal and dangerous drugs, our view is that he should 
leave  college and make room for people prepared to take good 
advantage of the college  opportunity."

The College's hard line, however, did not seem to impede  the 
experimentally-ambitious.

"The mid 60s were a time of great tumult  in the United States," says 
James F. Calvert '67. "Drug use was an important  part of the general 
atmosphere of rebellion."

Calvert, then a senior at  the College, believed that The Crimson was 
giving drug users a bad rap.

He responded by writing an open letter to the freshman class 
endorsing the use of LSD. He faced no discipline from the College.

The 1960s,  though, were not necessarily an exceptional time. Wade 
Davis '75 claims that the  70s were just as raucous. "Marijuana was 
simply the backdrop of the era," he  says. Davis doesn't remember any 
drug busts or police conspiracies to break up  campus happenings, and 
he believes that enforcement was "pretty laissez-faire."

"The University basically turned a blind eye to it," says Davis.

Beginning in 1967, freshman proctors were instructed to remind their 
charges about the punitive consequences of drug and alcohol use, but 
Victoria W. Wulsin '75 does not remember being warned. "But maybe 
that's just because I  wasn't listening," she says.

Although obviously popular among students,  the University's 
laissez-faire attitude towards drugs eventually got the school  into 
hot water. In 1986, then- Secretary of Education William J. Bennett 
called  Harvard's lack of anti-drug action "unconscionable."

"What Harvard  fails to do,"  he said, "others will fail to do."

Taking Their Chances

In a more recent incident, two Currier House residents pled guilty to 
the possesion of an assortment of drugs in 1996 after what HUPD told 
The Crimson  in April 1996 was a six-to-eight week investigation. The 
students pled guilty to possesion in a school zone, and the College 
did not allow them to walk with their class during commencement. In 
the end, hough, the duo did graduate.

These days, Ryan M. Travia, director of Alcohol and Substance Abuse 
Services at Harvard, tells FM that the College has no interest in 
"sniffing"  underneath students' doors. He does say, though, that the 
University is ready to respond. "When a situation comes to the 
attention of a College officer, the expectation is that it will be 
addressed,"  he says.

The College has  decided, according to Travia, to remain as fair as 
possible in light of the law,  and Ellison agrees.

"I believe that our enforcement policies have always  had to follow 
those of the Commonwealth and Federal statutes,"  Ellison writes in 
an email. "We might have changed in response to changes in the law, 
and it is  possible that individual attitudes have changed, but I 
don't think enforcement  has changed independently."

Though HUPD's stake-out means the alledged  DeWolfe tokers may end up 
with a police record, if precedent proves anything,  they'll be 
walking with their class.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman