U-Md. Students Vote to Soften Pot Penalties

Matt Zernhelt, from left, Dave Shaughnessy and John Decker celebrate after nearly two-thirds of undergraduates who voted endorsed a referendum to reduce marijuana penalties. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

University of Maryland students celebrated student government election results yesterday with a bottle of bubbly -- nonalcoholic, of course -- and a freshman broke into a mellow, Phish sort of victory dance.

Not only had they elected new student leaders, but nearly two-thirds of the undergraduates who voted endorsed a referendum to reduce penalties for students caught with marijuana so that they would be treated the same as alcohol violations -- a result with much symbolic weight but no actual power to change the school's policies.

"We are pumped," said senior and campaign activist Damien Nichols yesterday afternoon, wearing a black suit and a "party organically" T-shirt with a pot leaf. "The students have spoken!"

Not all the students -- not even 4,500 of the more than 25,000 undergraduates voted on the student government association election ballot question.

The university's vice president for student affairs said the administration takes any strong message from student elections very seriously. But she doesn't think the school will be able to treat drug and alcohol violations the same way.

"You've got to look at these two issues differently," Linda Clement said, because marijuana can bring harder drugs, dealers and crime. "Our campus police believe very strongly that drug activity attracts people to the campus who are dangerous."

The vote comes just as the school, which has enjoyed a growing national reputation for its academics in recent years, also is fighting off the bad publicity that postgame student riots have brought. Last week, drunken students celebrated the women's basketball national championship win by setting fires and shaking buses in College Park.

U-Md. is the fifth university in the country to pass a referendum like this, part of a year-old campaign to promote marijuana as a safer alternative to alcohol.

Steve Fox, executive director of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, cites statistics on all sorts of awful things that happen to enormous numbers of college students as a result of drinking -- deaths, injuries, sexual assaults.

The SAFER campaign started at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University after two students died after drinking. This year, two other schools, the University of Texas and Florida State University, passed similar referendums.

And none of those schools have changed their policies.

Gwendolyn Dungy, executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, laughed when she heard about the vote. She doesn't know of any college in the country that treats drug and alcohol violations the same -- mostly because of the law, she said, because, unlike smoking marijuana, drinking is legal after 21.