USUPD crack down on marijuana use in dorms
Four USU students were arrested in Mountain View Tower last week for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. The four include two male and two female students. They will appear in court and may face jail time. Housing services has also imposed a sanction on the students.
USU Police captain Steven Milne said the university police were called in on Wednesday, Feb. 23, to investigate a suspicious odor. When they arrived, the police found the four students high, two of them possessing pipes. The students were subsequently arrested.
Captain Milne said alcohol and drug-related incidents regularly occur on campus, though not with great frequency.
“They’re not a common thing,” he said. “We do get a lot of calls for suspicious or strange odor on campus housing. Sometimes we get there and it’s incense or something else. Or the call is delayed and when we get there there is no odor.”
According to the USU Police website, in 2009 more than 50 percent of arrests on campus were related to drug and alcohol abuse. Out of 111 arrests that year, 18 were drug-related and 51 were alcohol-related. The most common alcohol offense was minors in possession (MIP).
Resident Director for Mountain View Towers Gary Phillips also said incidents within the residence halls are fairly rare. However, he said that often he and his staff will be aware of something going on but are unable to act until they can catch the involved persons actively committing an offense.
“That can be frustrating. Anytime we know something is happening, we wanna do something about it immediately. But a lot of the times you have to wait for just the right time to be able to address something in order to be able to address it both from the policy end of things and from the legal end of things,” he said.
Phillips said sanctions were in place that he hoped would help the students learn the consequences of their action. He said the housing system in not intended to be punitive, but rather educational.
Phillips said prior to last week’s arrests he had heard rumors about drug problems in the area. He said anytime he suspects illegal activity he will let the police know so that when an opportunity arises the police are already informed on the situation.
“One of my biggest concerns is when students start coming to me with concerns,” he said.
Phillips said when students come to him, he wants to be able to let them know what he’s doing to solve the problem, but often can’t give specifics because it could violate the confidentiality of the residents in question.
He said he hopes last week’s arrests will warn students not to use drugs on campus. “The residence halls are not the place for this,” he said. “Whatever your personal stance on it is, it’s still against the law. So, the residence halls are going to be one of the only places where we have people actively looking for that kind of behavior in order to discourage it and address it.
“It really shouldn’t be happening here and there’s no reason to take that kind of risk. You can end up evicted, fined, assigned community service hours, any number of sanctions … . It just makes your life far more difficult than it has to be,” Phillips said.
After they meet with a local judge, the four students may be fined, jailed or assigned community service hours based on their past criminal records.
– robmjepson@gmail.com