Five cited for marijuana use in less than a week

Between Jan. 10 and Jan. 14, five BW students were cited for marijuana use.

According to Gary Black, director of Safety & Security, all the citations are from dorms where Safety & Security was contacted with complaints from hall staff. There has only been one other marijuana citation since these incidents took place.

Black stated that the calls came from North Hall on Jan. 10 at 11:20 p.m. (two students), Lang on Jan. 12
at 9:45 p.m. (two students) and Ernsthausen on Jan. 14 at about 12:30 a.m. There was evidence found in North and Ernsthausen and students in both cases handed over the remaining marijuana.

There was also an alcohol citation in Findley Hall on Jan. 13 at 12:30 a.m. that involved a non-BW student. According to Black, there was one can of beer found in that room, but it was obvious that they had all been drinking.

All of the marijuana incidents were discovered by hall staff when the smelled marijuana coming from the rooms.

“This isn’t every call. Sometimes we’ll get a call of a smell of marijuana and the officers will check and they really don’t notice it or it’s so faint they can’t follow up on it,” said Black.

Although these citations were all made in a concentrated period of time, the amount of citations for the month is not unusual. According to Black, there were 50 drug and alcohol reports at BW in 2017, with an average of 4 or 5 a month.

Black noted that the amount of drug and alcohol cases at BW is “pretty typical” not only for the school itself, but also compared to colleges of similar size.

“This is definitely not out of the ordinary. What happens sometimes is they may be grouped depending on
what might be going on. If you look at 2016 in April, which is April Reign, we had 10 reports — 6 or 7 on one day,” Black said.

The start of the semester is a time to reunite with friends, move into a single after it doesn’t work out with the first roommate and ditch New Year resolutions for Lang waffle night. For some students, it’s a time to resume a not-so-academic extracurricular activity.

“It seems like when school first comes back in the fall, we get more calls. But if you look at the numbers… It’s usually pretty evenly spread out. I don’t know if there’s a particular trend or anything, other than both years, February was very high. I have no idea why. Maybe because the weather is crummy and the students are in more,” said Black.