Oakland, Calif. - The campus tour began promptly at 3 p.m. and was attended by a fairly typical cast of characters. There was an affable, out-of-work engineer looking to study for a new profession; a long-haired youngster all but quivering with the certainty that he had found his collegiate "perfect fit"; and, with him, a well-barbered elderly man who hovered nearby looking taciturn but not unsupportive. "I'm the grandfather, along for the ride," the man explained once the group was inside the main campus building, his tone of voice conveying a remarkable neutrality considering that, at the moment, he was surrounded by potted marijuana plants. "I wanted to make sure that this was all," he paused, "legitimate." [continues 1134 words]
This Is Most Definitely Not A Cautionary Tale I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana. Perhaps the title of this column made some people think it would be a cautionary tale. On the contrary, I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities. [continues 1429 words]
Opponents of a law that prevents students who are convicted of drug offenses from receiving federal financial aid were handed another legal defeat today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, upholding a 2006 decision by a U.S. District Court, has refused to reinstate a lawsuit that sought to strike down the law. In its ruling the appeals court rejected arguments by the Students for Sensible Drug Policy Foundation, which filed the appeal, that the federal law is unconstitutional. [continues 69 words]
The blogosphere lit up recently with wisecracks and speculation over some videos that show a University of Florida management lecturer, Howard J. (John) Hall, delivering a giggly, rambling lesson on Boston, Machiavelli, and the origins of the middle-finger salute. Mr. Hall, who is being popularly referred to as the "apparently baked professor," did not respond to telephone messages from The Chronicle, and officials at the university were also understandably tight-lipped, saying only that he was placed on administrative leave immediately after the lecture. [continues 160 words]
A marijuana-legalization group has joined the campaign against campus drinking - sort of Matt Bakalar says his parents told him they did not mind if he smoked marijuana as long as he did not do anything stupid or get caught. He got caught. In September, undercover police officers arrested him outside a dormitory at the University of Maryland at College Park after he bought an eighth of an ounce from a friend. Mr. Bakalar, a freshman, spent 14 hours in jail, and the university eventually barred him from campus housing. [continues 1366 words]
The U.S. Department of Education has removed from its Web site incorrect information about the eligibility for federal aid of students with drug convictions, despite saying last week that it could not fix the error until late July. The corrected page, on the part of the department's Web site with information on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, now instructs students to complete a "drug-conviction worksheet" to learn if drug convictions affect their eligibility. Previously, the page incorrectly stated that students "must not have any drug convictions" to receive aid (The Chronicle, July 1). [continues 84 words]
The University of Vermont has agreed to pay $7,500 each to two students who were arrested at a campus rally last spring in support of legalizing marijuana. The students asserted that their First Amendment rights had been violated and that the university had pursued disciplinary action against them even after local criminal charges had been dropped. The event, known as the "420" rally , has been held at the university almost every year for nearly a decade. At 4:20 p.m. on April 20, students have gathered on a campus lawn and displayed their devotion to the cause of making marijuana legal. Past rallies have attracted more than a thousand students and have included formal speakers and discussion groups. [continues 464 words]
A federal judge ruled on Friday that Ohio State University must allow a pro-marijuana festival to be held on the campus, in Columbus. The university administration had canceled the ninth annual Hempfest on Tuesday. "We are disappointed in the ruling," William Hall, vice president for student affairs, said Friday in a written statement. "But we respect the court's decision and will comply with the ruling." This year's Hempfest was held as scheduled on Saturday. The chief organizers of the event, Sean Luse and Mark Verhoff, said they received an e-mail message on Tuesday afternoon from Pat Hall, director of student judicial affairs, telling them that the festival had to be canceled. The festival's sponsoring organization, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, then asked Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the U.S. District Court in Columbus to bar the university from canceling the event. [continues 226 words]
Wednesday, February 25, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time A study by a prominent researcher warning of the dangers of Ecstasy was retracted last September after it was revealed that primates in the study had been injected with a different drug. What does this mean for the future of Ecstasy research? What are the implications for U.S. drug policy? In an article published in the September 27, 2002, issue of Science magazine, George A. Ricaurte, an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University, warned of new dangers attached to the use of Ecstasy, including the risk of severe brain damage and debilitating neurological diseases, even from just one night of taking the drug. A year later, the article was retracted after it was revealed that Dr. Ricaurte had mistakenly tested the effects of methamphetamine, not Ecstasy. [continues 2703 words]
A Retracted Study On A Controversial Substance Raises Questions About The Reliability Of Government-Sponsored Research On Drugs Until recently, Ecstasy had been very good to George A. Ricaurte. An associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Ricaurte is the nation's most prominent researcher on methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, the chemical name for Ecstasy, a drug that produces feelings of intense euphoria, heightened sociability, and enhanced sensations like touch. His research in the mid-1980s was the first to suggest that the drug might be damaging to the serotonin system, which is important in regulating mood, sleep, appetite, and other functions. He has also received nearly $10-million in federal funds in the last seven years, and some of his research results have become key building blocks in the government's much-ballyhooed "war on drugs." [continues 3394 words]
Congress this month asked the National Institutes of Health to justify its support of more than 160 academic studies that involve sexual behavior, HIV transmission, or alcohol and drug use, after several lawmakers criticized some research projects in those areas as an apparent waste of taxpayer money. Such requests are not unprecedented, but the number of studies included in the latest inquiry appears to involve significantly more projects than past requests from Congress to any federal agency that supports academic research. [continues 572 words]
A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University has retracted a widely publicized report on the harmful health effects of the drug Ecstasy after concluding that most of the laboratory animals in its study had mistakenly been given a different substance. In a retraction scheduled to be printed this week in the journal Science, the researchers say that all but one of the 10 primates in its study were mistakenly given methamphetamine rather than the intended drug, which is popularly known as Ecstasy and technically referred to as methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. [continues 480 words]
One stupid mistake can cost you everything. Perhaps no one knows that better than David C. England. On March 12, while Mr. England was president of Des Moines Area Community College, some 20 Iowa narcotics agents raided his home and found a smoky room and more than two pounds of packaged marijuana along with some seedlings. That day, as agents searched his cozy suburban house, Mr. England, 51, thought, "My life is over." To be sure, his career in higher education may be. After resigning the presidency and resolving the criminal charges with a plea bargain, Mr. England is hoping to write a book about his experience and has started applying for administrative jobs at two-year colleges. But many who believed in him simply shake their heads and wonder why he threw it all away. [continues 1988 words]
Drug arrests at the nation's colleges increased for the 10th consecutive year, rising by 5.5 percent in 2001. The number of liquor arrests also increased in 2001, rising 4.7 percent. Many college police officials attribute those changes to tougher enforcement on campuses, and some of them say students are increasingly intolerant of substance abuse among their peers -- and more likely to contact campus officers when they confront it. The figures are based on a Chronicle analysis of data from 4,711 two-year and four-year, nonprofit and for-profit educational institutions that are eligible for federal financial aid. The statistics were released earlier this year by the U.S. Education Department. [continues 1429 words]
Police officers arrested 11 students of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania on Friday during an early-morning drug sweep of campus housing and nearby apartment buildings. Two dozen officers and several drug-sniffing dogs from more than half a dozen local jurisdictions in northwestern Pennsylvania conducted the raid, which netted undisclosed amounts of marijuana, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, and substances that students allegedly had passed off as cocaine and Ecstasy, according to an account published on Saturday in the Erie Times News, a local newspaper. [continues 199 words]
It's easy to name all the professionals we wouldn't want nursing a drug problem. We'd like our airline pilot not to amble giddily toward the cockpit, his mind on the pleasure palaces of Kubla Khan. We value the surgeon whose war experience with morphine makes him extra sensitive to side effects, but somehow prefer his drug-free judgment when he has scalpel in hand. We fear that the lawyer who shows up with one toke too many will metamorphosize into Al Pacino in ... And Justice for All, suddenly frothing at the mouth and ranting that it's his client who's a dirty, rotten, guilty son of a bitch. [continues 1319 words]
As I write, the panic over the Washington-area sniper appears to have ended with the arrest of a truly bizarre father-stepson combination, but, until it was over, the saga held us agog for the better part of a month. Like the exploits of Jack the Ripper in the darkened East End streets of late-Victorian London, the almost-daily attacks filled us with terror, kept us glued to the news outlets of our day, and, during the weeks of uncertainty and rumor, dramatically changed people's daily routines. [continues 2715 words]
Campus police officers at Dartmouth College can search students' dormitory rooms for illegal drugs without first obtaining a search warrant, New Hampshire's Supreme Court ruled on Friday. The court's decision (http://www.state.nh.us/courts/supreme/opinions/0210/nemse124.htm) reversed a ruling by a state district court in a case involving a student who was charged with marijuana possession after campus police officers found illegal drugs during a search of the student's dorm room. A lawyer for the student, Adam Nemser, argued that the search had violated the student's protection against improper searches and seizures, under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The student charged that the evidence had been gathered improperly and that the charges should be dropped. [continues 282 words]
One morning three years ago, Ansley Hamid was awakened by a thumping on his door. First, the anthropologist says, he thought it might be the pest-control man. It wasn't. "This is the police. Open up!" Groggy and shirtless, Mr. Hamid complied, peering out above the security chain. He asked if he could get dressed and began to close the door. But one of the federal agents stuck his toe inside, keeping it open. Once the professor let them in, there was a flash of activity: four men, one woman, guns, badges. They took pictures, looked in closets. There was talk of misusing a federal grant, of snorting heroin, of arrest. [continues 3454 words]
The philanthropist Peter B. Lewis -- savvy businessman, patron of the arts, financial supporter of educational institutions, iconoclastic billionaire - -- is a dedicated libertarian as well. He smokes marijuana and favors its legalization, donates millions to the American Civil Liberties Union, and lustily exercises the Constitution's guarantee of free speech. "I like stirring the pot," Mr. Lewis, 68, says at lunch, biting into a hamburger ordered rare. "I like challenging the status quo." Among the beneficiaries of Mr. Lewis's largess -- and the targets of his free speech -- is Case Western Reserve University. It has used $36-million of his money to erect a stunning new home for its business school, dedicated this month. All swerves and curves and undulating steel, the building was designed by the famed architect Frank Gehry, a friend of Mr. Lewis. [continues 1287 words]
