Marijuana and Residence Life

In My Humble Opinion
1

Back when I was a sophomore in college, I got caught smoking marijuana by my RA. I had the door open to a small balcony thinking that it would dissipate the smell. No dice. I got caught and worried about the punishment for the whole next 24 hours. The next time I saw my RA he told me, “Smoke that stuff in your room. That way I don’t smell it and I don’t have to do anything about it.” Caught a break there.

My friend was not so lucky*. His RA told higher ups. The higher ups told the coaches and he was kicked off the team. He was still in school but I don’t know if he received any other punishment.

So my questions are:

If you were a student and got caught what happened?
If you were an RA or some other person of authority how did you handle it?

*(Unconnected incident)

2

I got caught a couple of times in my dorm room. Usually I was drunk and so I didn’t give a shit. My RA was a really nice guy, considering he was a criminal justice student. He just told me to take it outside. Even let me borrow a fan to air out the room. To be honest he was lot less tolerant when it came to cigarette smoking, he actually enforced the “no smoking within 20 ft of the building” rule. This was at Cal Poly, roughly 2002-2004.

3

When I worked small U Security, it was something of a big deal, even in 2008, which made no sense for such an ultra-liberal school. Of course, it made a lot of difference if you were black or white.

I had to search, under supervision of my boss, a white, gay male student’s room for more drugs. The kid was crying, frightened and seriously embarassed, as the wall over his bed was covered with gay porn and here I was, a pretty much middle aged security guy, going through all his shit while a retired military guy in his 60’s sternly watched. I’ll be honest; I did a shit job of searching, and deliberately glossed over a couple of spots where I figured things were likely to be hidden. Because I smoked pot for years in my past and don’t see the harm. Especially given that there is a time and a place for everything in life, and that place is College. Unfortunately, that kid was suspended for a time and threatened with expulsion, over little more than about a gram of weed.

We had a another guy, a black athlete (at a Div III school - who fucking cares), who was caught with cocaine, crack, meth and pot all at the same time, but in small amounts. They called the cops, who took one look at felony drugs and said “Looks like a college matter to us” and left. That guy got off scot free, no repercussions. In that same year, he beat up another student (who later left school and committed suicide) and stole the guy’s computer, beat his ex-girlfriend/mother of his kid, got caught with other drugs, and freely trespassed in an apartment building he was told to stay out of. And not a fucking thing happened to him other than that Security was told to stop picking on him.

4

Your story sounds much more like it matters whether you’re an athlete or a non-athlete. In my case both the partakers were black and both the RAs were white.

5

Small, church-affiliated Liberal Arts college in the early 80s.

Both drugs and alcohol were forbidden in the dorms. Drinking was tolerated at off-campus frat houses.

I think drugs were an automatic expulsion. Drinking might have had a three-strikes policy attached.

In our largest dorm, the RAs mostly didn’t want to bust folks and would let you know that you needed to be discreet.

6

Policy on drinking or drugs in the dorm, Ball State, '78-'83:
Get caught, you’re “written up”.
Get caught the second time, you’re “written up”.
Get caught the third time, there’s a hearing and you may have to move out of the dorm.
Oh- did I say you had to get caught with it? Walking around drunk or high had no penalties.
I’ve heard they’re a bit stricter now.

7

I got caught my freshman year in the university-owned apartments because my roommate told on me (we ended up switching roommates with the guy across the hall who also smoked weed). I had an interesting punishment: I had to make posters explaining the potential consequences of marijuana use and post them around the apartments! I did it very tongue-in-cheek and I don’t think the RA was particularly pleased with the product I made but it wasn’t pursued any further.

8

Give the RA a couple bong hits.

9

My freshman year was at a fine institution with the nickname “Wasted State”. My RA was pretty cool about letting us know if we were at risk of being caught. He’d tell us to go outside. Although there were some RA’s who were a little tougher with enforcement. You had to have a substantial quantity or behave in a manner that was really stupid to get into more trouble.

10

Kinda like this?

Been a while since I watched the whole thing, but the first part, with Sony Bono in his gold lame’ outfit, was funny as hell in how close he came to saying “go ahead and smoke weed” while making a court ordered anti-drug piece.

11

Hey, I was a CSD at Muir Hall from 1998-2000!

12

Holy crap, reading this thread made me realize something that, looking back, seems INSANE. I never saw or even HEARD ABOUT any illegal drug use at my college (WPI) when I was there. Either we were the most high strung bunch of nerds on the east coast, or I missed the whole college experience. The only time I was around anyone who was smoking weed was in a friend’s dorm, when we were watching The Wall movie (which pretty much REQUIRES being stoned to appreciate it the correct way). Then again, I remember it being mentioned numerous times that alcohol (and caffeine!) was the drug of choice at WPI.

As for the RAs, well they were openly known throughout our school as the “anti-drinking police”, since it often seemed like their only job was to crack down on underage drinking. They did a decent job respecting your privacy, so that when we drank with the door closed, nobody would know or bother us. I have heard incidents of students being caught drinking or with alcohol in their room, which usually resulted in the alcohol being confiscated/flushed (if they’re 21, it was legal to have it) and no further discipline. There were also two fraternities which got shut down during my tenure there - one was due to a drunk student falling out a 3rd story window and dying, and the other for embezzling charity drive donations. The combination made the school strongly consider removing all official support of the whole fraternity system, until they got a lot of pressure from alumni to reconsider.

This greatly pales to University of Hartford, where RAs apparently had the right to (and did!) barge into your dorm room anytime they wanted to see if anyone was holding a beer can. When I attended a party there, one student at a time had to be on RA watch. I don’t know what actually happened if they got caught, but it was taken so seriously that I bet it went way beyond losing your stash.

The funny thing is I never touched any illegal drugs, aside from a couple of times when I tried and failed to get high (I have a VERY low tolerance for smoke), until I was 28, long after I left college.

13

I worked campus security at Bemidji State University in 1995-96. I was a non-traditional student (in my 30s) and it was a dry campus. We were under official instructions to show no mercy in regard to pot on campus. Of course, the security officers who were traditional students lapped this up like crazy, especially since most of them were CJ majors.

We were even instructed how to deal with the local cops if there was a problem, and that was, if asked what the fumes smelled like, they smelled like pot, period. They did not smell like burning rope, because the next question would have inevitably been “How do you know it wasn’t burning rope, then?” There was, however, a tacit acknowledgement that it was sometimes hard to differentiate the smell of pot and the smell of sweetgrass – and Bemidji had a high Indian student population. However, this was covered off with a warning that there was no reason to burn anything in residence or in the dorms, and if we encountered an Indian student with fumes coming from his room, that we were to remind him/her of this in a friendly way.

My way of handling things was different, especially since the local law enforcement was somewhat Draconian in regard to personal possession. The first time, I would give a warning, and that warning was that (1) I hated to file reports, and any repeated incident would usually mean that I had to file a report. If this happened, I would be extremely pissed, and I would throw the frigging book at them, so (2) whatever you’re doing, be cool about it. You know what you can/can’t should/shouldn’t do, so use your head, because if you caused me any more grief on my shift, you would know about it. Period.

Rumours from the dorms were that I was the only Officer that was as good as his word; they must have all been smart about it, because I never had to file a single report. Other Officers, usually CJ majors, who wanted to come on like “Super Pigs” were not so lucky, and they acutally created more grief on their shifts than they needed to. There was even one CJ guy that showed up on one of my shifts that was “so sure that there was something going on in [a certain dorm room]”, that he tried to camp out right there on the guy’s doorstep, just waiting for something to happen. I told him that what he was doing would be seen as harassment if he was caught, and I would back the complainant 100% if he was dumb enough to get caught, and he finally moved his ass out of there. Naturally, no complaints ever came in about that room, but the CJ guy wasn’t smart enough to change his viewpoint. Turned out that the guy in that room was Indian, and he claimed harassment against the Officer, who was removed immediately from his job, the University not wanting to get into a pissing match with any Reservations or other organized groups.

As to booze, I had the same rules – be cool and don’t cause me any problems and everything is fine as far as I was concerned. If you want to get drunk, go ahead, but don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Never had a problem with that either.
.

14

This reminds me of the jagoff I had to deal with as an RA in the early '80’s at a large state university. The official policy was no drinking or drugs, but I didn’t give a crap as long as I wasn’t put in an untenable position. The guy in the room next door to my office (next door, mind) loved to smoke him some weed; the hallway would reek of it. I’d knock on his door, tell him that since he was unlucky enough to room next to the RA he would have to move his smoking somewhere else, and he’d just stare at me and shut the door. The second time, I told him I’d call the campus police if there was a next time.

About a week later, the campus Housing Adminstrator was in my office discussing something or other with me when, sure enough, pot smoke began permeating throughout hall. With my boss there, I had no choice but to call campus security. They came by, took his stash, and wrote him a ticket. I’m not sure if there were any other repercussions.

I resented the hell out of being put in the position of being the bad guy. Today he’s probably still telling people what a hard ass he had for an RA. He’s the type of guy who plays his stereo full blast in a dorm, and if you don’t like it, well, sucks to be you.

15

I was an RA my senior year. I never encountered drugs during my time (though, I was never looking for it). The only thing I cracked down on was open alcohol in the hallway. We didn’t have a policy against alcohol in your room - the only things we really cared about were drugs, drinking in the hall, and binge drinking. If the Rector found out you puked, you got written up (put on the “Chum List”). 2nd violation sent you to Residence Life, who would probably send you to Alcohol and Drug Education.

My sophomore year a few idiots got caught smoking pot right outside the dorm, 20 feet from where the rector smokes every.single.night. There’s an entire huge campus, including two secluded lakes - go smoke there you morons!

16

If cluelessness had been against policy at my school, about 90% of my dorm would have been kicked out.

17

I think you could say the same thing about today’s teenagers.

<slight derail>

The people next door are now down to their youngest son, his two older brothers having moved out just after their eighteenth birthdays. The little shit is all of sixteen, but he thinks he knows it all. It’s all well and good that he’s likely the spoiled indulged family baby, but he acts like everyone else should treat him this way too. Of course, the fact that both parents are in denial about their little darling doesn’t help matters much either.

That’s fine…until they inflict the shortcomings of their bad parenting on the rest of the neighbourhood and expect that we won’t mind their doing it, too. They take off for a weekend up to their cottage, leave the little darling behind, and the rest of us have to deal with his wild parties.

Now, shit, don’t get me wrong. I was sixteen once too, and yes, I did have some wild parties, but there was a difference – first of all that we were smart about it, not wanting to get caught, so we kept the noise down to a dull roar and made sure no one else was inconvenienced over it. These kids are total idiots, wandering around the back yard and yelling/screaming at each other at 2 AM – like, how stupid can you get. The other thing is that if I called him on it, he would get outright confrontational and mouthy – now, that’s something we would NEVER have done, but then again, we were afraid that if our parents found out, we would get punished, something that apparently doesn’t happen these days.

Fun and games two weeks ago, with mommy and daddy taking off for a whole week. For the first two nights, there were tons of people (38 the first night, 35 the second) dropping in and then taking off two or three minutes later, all between 5:15 PM and 1 AM. Like WTF?

And then I realized what was going on – the little shit was selling drugs out his back door. That had to be it. Why else would people drop in for three minutes and gone unless they were only picking something up?

So I got the local cops involved. They agreed that the behaviour was suspicious, and luckily, they had the manpower to spare so it could be checked out.

Since then, several things have happened:

  1. Mommy and daddy came home early from their holiday;
  2. Junior is (still) nowhere to be seen;
  3. the neighbourhood was much quieter for the rest of the week with none of that in/out traffic

For all intensive purposes, problem solved.

18

I was an RA in college in the late '80s (for the '89-'90 school year, to be precise). It was a small dorm and I was the only RA for the building – I think about 50-60 students but maybe fewer; my memory is hazy (and I didn’t even do pot!).

At the beginning of the year we had a dorm meeting and I told them that I was not their parent and I would not be monitoring what or who they did in their rooms, unless they were creating conflict with the other students or their roommate. I reminded them that if there were “odors” that they did not wish to have permeate the hallway, they should look into a wet rolled-up towel. I reminded them of the University’s drug and alchohol policy (such as it was back then), which I would enforce if violations were brought to my attention.

I don’t ever recall having any issues. I’d smell pot occasionally, but never looked for the source. If I had ever seen anyone smoking (pot or tobacco) in a public area I would made them take it to their room. If a roommate complained I would help them work something out.

One thing I never did (in this situation) was get the Campus Police or University officials involved – it never escalated to a point where it was necessary.

19

One time I follow the University Police into a student’s room. He had been drinking with his friends, and visited the food truck that was parked nearby to serve students with late-night munchies. While the food truck vendor was standing by selling candy and pizza slices, my moron resident climbed into the truck and started driving it away.

He only drove about ten feet before getting out, but the driver called the UP. The student panicked and ran to his room (I heard him slam the door). The UP, hot on his trail, started banging on his door. I heard the commotion and stood outside his door with them.

The student was saying through the locked door “What is it? what do you want?” then he opened the door in his underwear, trying to make like he had been asleep the whole time. The driver was there, though, and identified him. The police told the student to get dressed to come to HQ with them, but he refused. So they said “okay” and started to take him in his underwear. That changed his mind.

I think the driver later dropped the charges.

20

It’s kind of amazing for me to remember how prevalent drug (and especially alcohol) abuse were at my school – this was a top-tier private university. On-campus fraternity keg parties were a staple of social life for both Greeks and non-Greeks. I’m willing to bet things have changed since then.