DOPE AND DOPE(R)S ON CAMPUS

By now, most of you know that 75 San Diego State University (SDSU) students and 21 others were arrested the other day on various drug charges. The investigation began a year ago after freshman student Shirley Poliakoff died from a cocaine overdose. Campus police suspected wide-spread campus drug violations and asked for the DEA's assistance in their investigation. Undercover agents made numerous buys of marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and meth on and off campus.

Many of the undercover buys were made at the university's fraternity houses. One of the students arrested was about to graduate with a degree in Criminal Justice. Another student was about to get his Masters Degree in Homeland Security. The arrests gave SDSU a well-deserved black eye. Why? Because, had it not been for Poliakoff's overdose and the cocaine overdose death last February of a Mesa College student at a SDSU frat house, the university would have continued to turn a blind eye to a problem they were sure to have been aware of.

Shirley Poliakoff's brother appeared this morning on NBC's Today Show. He believes that illegal drug sales and use are widespread on college campuses all over our country and that parents are not aware of how extensive this problem is. He was also critical of parents who take a lackadasical attitude about their kids experimenting with drugs because that is just "part of growing up."

Dope and dope(r)s on campus is not a recent problem. Back in the 1960's, I investigated the use of drugs on the campus of the University of California at Riverside. Guess what? It wasn't just students. Several of the university's English professors, several Social Science professors, and a couple of math professors were heavily involved in the illegal purchase and use of LSD and other mind altering drugs. So were a good number of the university's non-teaching staff. Worse yet, some students obtained illegal drugs from their professors. And, some professors and students were using drugs together.

What is really sad is that many colleges and universties do not take campus drug use seriously until they are the recipients of bad publicity arising from the overdose death of a young student. The illegal sales and use of drugs on college campuses is no secret to most students. Thus, college administrators are certain to be aware of the drug dealings taking place right under their noses.

The trouble with both College and High School administrators is that they will often try to hide unlawful campus activities from the public, believing that any bad publicity will reflect poorly on them personally. When colleges end up with tragedies like those at SDSU, college adminstrators should be held legally culpable whenever one of their students dies of a drug overdose.