Harvard Rarely Punishes Student Drug Use

Several times a week, Joe and his blockmates stuff towels under their door, open the windows, turn on a fan, and get stoned.

Occasionally, Joe says, he and his friends will head down to the bank of the Charles River and light up joints right out in the open. Joe, a Harvard senior who didn’t want his last name used for fear that potential employers would look unfavorably upon his marijuana use, says he never worries that his recreational drug use will land him in legal trouble.

“I don’t know anyone who smokes regularly who gives even a fleeting thought to the possibility of getting caught,” Joe said. “If you had nugget of weed in Dallas, you’d get your ass arrested, but here it seems like they have bigger fish to fry.”

Joe’s analysis may not be far off the mark. While an adult selling even an ounce of marijuana or growing one marijuana plant within three blocks of a university is subject to a one-year mandatory minimum sentence under federal law, students at Harvard are more likely to face a “formal warning” or, at worst, probation for their marijuana use.

Last year, only one student was arrested by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for drug law violations, and only two students went before the Administrative Board, the College’s disciplinary body, for drug-related behavior.

Marijuana use may violate federal law, but at Harvard, it’s less likely to get you in trouble than breaking a window.

Jay Ellison, the assistant dean of Harvard College and secretary of the Ad Board, says the Ad Board will not punish a student for simply smoking marijuana. In the two cases last year in which the board did take action, Ellison said, drugs were only part of the offense and were not the complete reason for punishment.

“We did not take action simply because drugs or alcohol were involved, but because of some inappropriate behavior,” he said.

Ellison elaborated that while students would not face the Ad Board for smoking pot or drinking underage, they would face the Board for violations such as smashing a window, breaking a door, or starting a fight. In fact, he says, the only reason alcohol and drugs are mentioned in the Ad Board’s reports is because of a government law.

And HUPD goes to great lengths to ensure that students caught smoking marijuana will face repercussions within the College and not in state or federal courts.

“If we catch a student smoking a joint, clearly that gives us the right to lock them up. But the question is, what is the most appropriate thing to do?” said HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano. “It’s most punitive internally, and our officers know that... We want to make sure there’s still some accountability there. That’s important.”

Catalano says that most drug law violations in the area come from individuals not affiliated with the College who come on campus to find a place to light up. Enforcement, in sum, is more likely to target “pit kids” and the homeless than Harvard students.

This discrepancy is not unique to Cambridge, and has a uniquely racial dimension. Across the country, some policy analysts say, it seems there are two sets of laws—one that applies to wealthy, privileged whites, and another that applies to poor, underprivileged blacks.

Allen St. Pierre, a spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says that blacks are three times as likely to be arrested over marijuana in the United States, even though actual use of the drug is just as common, he says, in wealthier white demographics like Cambridge.

While blacks comprise around 15 percent of the U.S. population and 15 percent of drug users, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Household Survey on Drug Use, they account for 36.8 percent of drug arrests.

In poor minority areas, St. Pierre says, individuals are forced to deal and smoke drugs in public spaces. But Harvard students have dorm rooms—and the notorious Science Center roof—where they seem to be able to smoke weed with impunity.

A freshman living in Pennypacker, who asked that his name not be used because he does not want his marijuana use to be widely known, says his proctor caught his next-door neighbors smoking pot in their room, but there seemed to have been no disciplinary consequences.

“They still smoke up in their room,” he said. “So it must not have been that big of a deal.”

The freshman joked that the only time he worries about being caught himself is when he is “paranoid from getting high.”

Jim von der Heydt, the senior tutor in Winthrop House, says he “very rarely” has to deal with marijuana smoking in the House.

But interviews with students, and information provided by University Health Services (UHS), suggest that marijuana use is anything but rare at Harvard.

A 2004 National College Health Assessment Survey run by UHS found that 28.7 percent of a random sampling of Harvard students had tried marijuana, said Ryan Travia, director of the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services at UHS.

When von der Heydt does bust smokers, he says, the actions he takes are remedial rather than punitive.

“Nothing the College does is conceived of as ‘punitive’,” he wrote in an e-mail. “If a student’s illicit behavior has impinged on her neighbors it needs to stop (though this can apply also to licit behavior, like a Dance Dance Revolution marathon over neighbor’s objections).”

The House’s response, he says, could involve referral to a clinician, a conversation between the student and House Masters, a formal House warning, or some combination of the three.

The Ad Board has record of only two “Inappropriate Behavior, Drugs” proceedings in 2004, both of which resulted in probation, according to the Board’s published statistics. In comparison, the Board took disciplinary action in 20 alcohol-related cases last year.

And during the 2004-2005 school year, HUPD reported eight times as many violations of alcohol laws than drug laws.

A NATIONAL ISSUE

St. Pierre says this type of treatment reflects national disparities in drug law enforcement, adding that enrollment at private colleges like Harvard amounts to a four-year reprieve from federal and state marijuana laws.

In university towns like Cambridge, arrests and convictions for marijuana use and distribution tend to be much lower per capita then almost anywhere else in the country, he says, as private colleges are often given leeway to deal with marijuana issues internally.

“Schools generally are much more tolerant about marijuana use,” St. Pierre says. “A place like Cambridge represents a situation where there’s a decidedly low per capita arrest rate.”

And while experts say that drug convictions, particularly at an early age, can seriously hinder efforts to advance in education or in a career, Harvard students are at a much lower risk of facing such long-term consequences.

“Even if you don’t spend one day in prison, a conviction on a drug charge is the equivalent to a life-long sentence,” wrote Scarlett Swerdlow, the executive director of drug law reform group Students for Sensible Drug Policy, in an e-mail. “Youth can forget an education [with] a conviction on a drug charge—no matter the nature or number of the offense. You could have made a mistake twenty years ago, but are ready to turn your life around, only to find that the national government and even a handful of state governments won’t grant you access to education through a federal financial aid ban found in the Higher Education Act.”

St. Pierre also highlighted the difference in treatment of offenses at private colleges and state schools.

“Private schools give a greater deference to students and trying to get them through their education in the best possible way,” he said. “State colleges are much more deferential to the state because they are an organ of the state.”

But Catalano disagrees with this assessment.

“Any decision that HUPD makes has nothing to do with getting kids through college but with what is the most appropriate way to address the problem,” he said.

At the University of Massachusetts, where St. Pierre went to school, the local and state police, rather than private campus police, are the ones called in to deal with offenses, he said, which can mean much more serious consequences.

“I think the statistics bear out that the traditionally under-represented and -served—including youth—bear the brunt of the Drug War,” Swerdlow wrote. “Not only in terms of the time they spend behind bars—anywhere from one to five to ten to twenty to fifty years—but the life-long consequences that come with a conviction on a marijuana charge.”

...BUT IT CAN HAPPEN

Drug arrests are so rare at Harvard, they quickly rise to the top of the student rumor mill, and the front pages of campus media.

In November 2004, a Harvard undergraduate was charged with possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Prompted by complaints that the smell of marijuana was permeating the hallway on the 12th floor of Mather Tower, police arrived at the room of Robert C. Schaffer ’05 on the evening of March 17, 2004, Catalano told The Crimson last year.

Once the officers traced the smell to Schaffer’s room, he allowed police to enter and opened his desk drawer to hand them what appeared to be a bag of marijuana, according to the incident report filed by HUPD Officer Thomas F. Karns Jr., as reported by The Crimson.

After searching the room, HUPD confiscated 45 clear plastic bags containing herb-like substances which the report described as marijuana and psilocybin, a blue purse holding “an off-white waxy substance that was in flakes and a solid yellow chunk of an unknown substance,” a pipe, a 200-gram weight and scale, a large black hunting knife, and a small box of rolling papers.

The case is yet to be resolved.

But even criminal charges don’t intimidate some Harvard students. Joe said he thinks that even if he were to be arrested, he would easily be able to get out of it by having his parents hire good lawyers and by using a bit of his own legal savvy.

“All it takes is a modicum of intelligence [to defend ourselves],” he said. “We have the Fourth Amendment and strict evidentiary requirements.”