When news broke a fortnight ago that two undergraduates had been arrested in connection with a nude, acid-fueled spectacle in the corridors of Quincy House's C-entry, one could have been forgiven for checking the calendar. Yes, it was 2006, not 1966 -- yet once again, the banks of the Charles were playing host to psychedelic excess. Thirty-eight hits' worth of excess, to be precise -- the number that the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) allegedly found in the room of Soren J. Siebach '08, as first reported in a February 25 article on the Crimson's website. The other arrestee, whom HUPD has not yet named, was hospitalized for drug treatment after assaulting two officers; naked and "acting in an aggressive and threatening manner," in the words of police logs, he initially eluded capture because his skin was too sweaty to seize. [continues 4218 words]
The drug provision of the Higher Education Act (HEA) has denied federal financial aid to those convicted of the possession or sale of controlled substances since 1998. Two thirds of undergraduates receive some form of aid from the University, sometimes including federal funds. However, there has not been a movement on campus to repeal the amendment of the HEA, despite the fact that it is up for reevaluation in Congress for the first time in seven years. The Undergraduate Council did not follow 160 other student governments last March, including those of Yale, Columbia, and Brown Universities, by adopting a resolution calling for an end to the aid ban. In the absence of action by the UC, Harvard has no advocacy organization that deals with drug legalization. Larsen Santos '06, chair of development for Drug Policy and Legalization - a Harvard group that exists only on facebook com - said he could not give suggestions for actions students might take to combat the provision. [continues 708 words]
