And you thought nothing could be more wrongheaded than Dartmouth's policy on alcohol?
During the 2004-2006 period, the Dartmouth administration had 75 students charged with drug infractions. Of these cases, only a handful of students were accused of drug dealing; the remainder were charged with possessing small amounts of a controlled substance.
Though Dartmouth has the smallest student population in the Ivy League, more students were accused of drug infractions at the College during these years than at any other Ivy school except Cornell (129 cases) -- but then Cornell has over three times as many undergraduates as we do. Look at the figures reported under the federal Clery Act by our sister schools: Yale (4); Columbia (34); Harvard (27); Brown (38); Princeton (50); Penn (30).
Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that the College's drug policy has changed in the last decade from rational tolerance to the harshest possible enforcement. Sound familiar? In 1995, Dartmouth's Director of Safety and Security Robert McEwen testified in court that "the College's policy with regard to controlled substances encountered by DSS officers was to destroy drug paraphernalia and to report to the Hanover Police Department the rare instances in which large quantities of drugs were discovered or DSS suspected drug trafficking."
In contrast, today, as with alcohol, zero tolerance has become the rule.
Under the current Wright administration policy -- which was formulated in cooperation with the Hanover Police -- when Safety and Security officers find drugs in any quantity, however small, they immediately seize them, write up a report, and alert the Hanover Police, who come to Rope Ferry Road to pick up the drugs. At that time, campus officials give their investigatory report file index number to the town police.
The Hanover Police can then obtain the contents of Safety and Security's file via a search warrant, and Hanover officers will question any Dartmouth students named in the file. If the students make any kind of admission, criminal charges are brought against them.
When the College is in session, Hanover Police will not search dorms under their agreement with the College; outside of term dates, however, the full force of the police can be applied.
An example of the latter scenario took place on December 7, 2006 when Office of Residential Life cleaning staff found the remains of a single marijuana cigarette, some pipes and plastic baggies containing "vegetative matter" in a vacated room in a College dorm suite.
Safety and Security's Sgts. Lauren Cummings '72 and Wayne Agan were summoned by the Office of Residential Life; in addition to the above material, they noticed that in a still-occupied room in the suite "a suspect marijuana pipe" was in plain view. Sgt. Cummings immediately called in Safety and Security investigator Rich Gavell, who observed rolling papers, a glass pipe and "a metal pipe with burnt residue" in the same room. Sgt. Cummings then contacted Town of Hanover Detective Frank Moran, who used the information provided to him by Safety and Security to obtain a search warrant from Lebanon District Court Judge Albert J. Cirone, Jr.
That afternoon Detective Moran and three Hanover Police officers searched the dorm rooms and seized the offending materials. The result of this combined arms effort: several Dartmouth students will probably be charged with drug possession, a criminal misdemeanor.
If the students fight the charge in court (where College employees can be expected to testify against them) and lose, they will pay a fine and have a police record that cannot be expunged for three years. If they plea bargain the charge down to a criminal violation, they will also pay a fine and have a police record for one year.
In both of these instances, unless the students complete an approved drug rehabilitation program that includes two random drug tests, they will be legally ineligible for any federal financial aid to education for at least one year. Additionally, given that graduate schools routinely ask whether applicants for admission have been arrested for any infraction beyond a driving violation, these students' applications for further study will be compromised.
What could the Wright administration possibly be thinking?
Education should be the College's goal, not delivering students to the local police and cutting off their financial aid. Can't the administration find its way to an understanding that certain controlled substances in small quantities constitute a victimless offense by Dartmouth undergraduates? Couldn't Safety and Security simply oblige students to destroy offending contraband and confiscate any drug paraphernalia that officers might find in the course of their rounds?
Of course I am not advocating that students descend into the hell of reefer madness. But why does the Wright administration come down so hard on students for an activity that is benevolently accepted at every other school in the Ivy League?
Dartmouth presents itself as acting in loco parentis. Well, we should ask just what kind of parents report their own children for a marijuana cigarette butt and a couple of pipes? And what kind of college administration, as its first reflex, turns its students over to the police and jeopardizes their present and future education?
