Where Is The Peace
Movement In the War On Marijuana?
Latest Campus Unrest Fired By Alcohol Not Social Activism
(Ed. note: This article represents both the best
and the worst of AP journalism. The good thing is that it presents a summary of wide
spread events in a way that the AP is uniquely equipped to do, and it gets comments from
the people involved. Most excellent. On the other hand, it is completely blinded by the
prohibitionist paradigm, as are the students themselves. The students feel the choker
collar tightening around their necks and don’t like it, but neither do they
understand it. The "right to party" taken by itself may seem contemptible. In
fact, taken by itself, it really is pathetic, simply because it cannot be taken by itself.
In the late Soviet period, one of the things that most undermined the popularity of
Gorbachev was his attempt to restrict the vodka supply. The poor Russians had nothing left
but the right to get drunk.
There are a number of factors that are working to end American marijuana prohibition,
i.e., medical marijuana, hemp, and the inescapable evidence of the general failure of drug
prohibition around the world. However, the one thing that could greatly accelerate the end
of marijuana prohibition in America would be the involvement of the campuses as they were
involved in previous social movements. This is one of the objectives of Marijuananews.com.
One of the most important points in this article is the role of email in mobilizing the
students.)
Associated Press
May 30, 1998
LATEST CAMPUS UNREST FIRED BY ALCOHOL, NOT SOCIAL ACTIVISM
(AP) -- Bonfires in the streets. Bottles whizzing through the air at police. Chants and
tear gas and television footage of students being led away in handcuffs.
The images may have harkened back to the 1960s, but it wasn’t war or segregation
that inspired scores of college students to take to the streets this year.
It was the right to party.
Students from at least 10 schools rallied and rioted, saying new restrictions on how
they drink and carouse were the latest evidence that their freedom is at stake.
Bans on porch furniture, limits on how many people can share a house, tickets for riding a
bicycle on the wrong side of the street—rule upon rule made without student input,
they say.
"It’s been one thing after another. Each one was not enough to set off a
protest, but we were getting sick of it," said Adam Herringa, 22, who graduated this
spring from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.
An e-mail summons answered by 3,000
Through e-mail, Herringa summoned 3,000 fellow students into the streets May 1 after
the school banned drinking at a popular spot where students party before and after
football games. Police fired tear gas as students lit bonfires and threw rocks and bottles
at officers.
But faculty, police and some students say something less meaningful is at work.
"What I saw seemed to have no rhyme or reason, no ideological passion, just
rebelliousness without a cause," said Richard Little, a spokesman for Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio.
Oxford police clashed with about 200 students on the nights of May 9-10 when they tried
to break up parties near campus after months of tension over drinking. Forty-five people
were arrested.
"Some people theorize that there’s always going to be that rebelliousness for
people of this age, yet with no war, no civil rights struggle, nothing to latch on
to—that cork’s going to pop," Little said.
Not much to do in peacetime?
"If there’s peace,
there isn’t much to
do—or it appears there isn’t," said Wallace Reese of the Greater Lansing Area Peace Education Center, which works on
mediating disputes such as the one there between students and police.
(Ed. note: Patrick Henry said, "Men cry, Peace, Peace, but
there is no peace." As a Quaker, I am bothered by the Peace Movement being AWOL in
the Drug War.)
Some student activists are disgusted by the gatherings, the largest at some schools
since the Vietnam War. There are still traditional social issues to work on, like racism,
education equity and labor conditions, they said.
(Ed. note: What is missing from this list?)
"People riot after a football game, but what’s the point? Yet when we want to have a nonviolent sit-in, not even a third of those
people show up," said Michael Norman, 21, a public relations and political
science student at Ohio State.
Norman was among a few dozen students who occupied an administrative building for a
week this month to protest a reorganization of the school’s minority affairs office.
The sit-in ended when the school agreed to hold off until fall.
Aldo Valmon, 31, a psychology student, has rallied for lower tuition and more minority
professors at New York’s Brooklyn College.
"To pick alcohol, drugs as a thing to mark your
career in college, to say ‘I fought for the right to drink,’ I find it
weak," he said.
(Ed. note: What an odd place for the word to show up.
Recognition that alcohol is a drug, but no mention of the drug prohibition.)
Restrictions on parties, alcohol stir clashes
About 175 people were cited this spring in clashes involving partying students and
police at Miami, Ohio State University, Ohio University and the
University of Akron. Some students said they were frustrated by police harshness on
partying students.
Other recent clashes include one on May 3 at Washington State
University in Pullman, where 23 police officers were injured during a riot by 2,000
students. Some students said they were angered by a year-old ban on alcohol at fraternity
parties and restrictions on off-campus parties.
And police in Plymouth, New Hampshire, were pelted with bottles and rocks when they
tried to disperse more than 500 partying students in early May. Students were angered by
recent restrictions on large gatherings and underage drinking.
"If they were after something that was more
humanity-centered than taking away the right to drink, perhaps I would be sympathetic to
them,"
said Henry Dittum, who retired this month after 33 years as an English
professor at Plymouth State College.
(Ed. note: Me, too. Let’s give them something else to work
on.)
Supported