College students who are marijuana users often share a similar
excuse when caught by University officials. In a spacious, bright
office on an upper floor of DuBourg Hall, Terisa Remelius scoffs at
their reasoning.

“I hear all the time: ‘I’m a student and part of being in school
is experimenting with things.’ The whole point of being a college
student is to question your ideas and belief systems. I believe
that academic freedom gives us the opportunity to explore new
things. I don’t think the intention of that is to come and smoke
pot.”

Remelius, the judicial affairs officer at Saint Louis
University, has heard many stories in this office. Most frequently,
she sees referrals that are related to alcohol use–vandalism and
sexual assault for example–not marijuana. However, marijuana use
leads a fair number of students through her door–20 violations
were referred to her last semester, which includes both violations
of federal and state law, as well as violations of SLU policy.

Remelius said that students are remarkably honest with her when
called in for a referral. She said that many students caught with
marijuana tell her that they hardly ever drink because they smoke
pot. Students who take other, harder drugs are also frank with her.
“They’ll usually tell me, ‘Yeah, I have tried LSD, ecstacy …”

When Remelius meets with students, she is looking for
information regarding the particular incident for which they were
referred. However, she tries to dig deeper with students–not to
punish them further, but to get them more appropriate help.

“I’m going to ask (students) questions, because I want to get
down to what’s the most helpful to the student.” For instance, if
she believes that a student smokes marijuana as their recreational
drug, but that they’re also doing other harder drugs, she uses this
information to determine what type of help the student needs. “I
want students to be safe, happy, and healthy. If you’re also doing
hardcore other stuff, it’s helpful to me to steer you in the right
direction,” she said. Students may be sent to counseling, for
instance.

Marijuana is not typically associated with violent behavior,
though Remelius warns that the drug affects everyone
differently.

“I think that marijuana is more typically something that’s going
to harm an individual, versus an entire community. Though, I have
seen it harm an entire community when people are high and making
poor decisions.”

The ubiquitous problem of alcohol abuse on campus is a
touchstone for determining how problematic marijuana is to the
community. “From my experience, it’s more typical for alcohol to be
a drug that harms a

community. More often than not, if a sexual assault occurs,
vandalism occurs, it can be linked to alcohol.”

Marijuana use is more commonly linked, Remelius said, to a
student’s lack of success on campus. “They may not go smoke a joint
and go knock in ballard lights or go hurt someone–but their grades
tend to fall, they’re less successful in terms of social
interaction on campus, they’re less likely to be in leadership
positions.”

Finding students smoking marijuana in the dorms and apartments
is not difficult, according to Remelius.

“The odor of it is so obvious. We’re onto all the tricks, we
know about opening the window and putting a fan in it and putting
wet towels under the door and we know about spraying air
freshener… We know about making the tubes with the dryer sheets
in the middle that you blow the smoke through.”

Every student should be well-versed in the rules laid out in the
SLU student handbook, Remelius said. There are two types of
violations for which a student can be referred to Judicial Affairs:
law violations and policy violations.

Offenses that violate federal and state laws must be reported to
the police, but the University also has policies that prohibit drug
paraphernalia and alcohol trophies. The details of the drug policy
on campus are on page 54 of the student handbook.

The Clery Act requires universities to report all Judicial Board
referrals. Statistics are available online:
www.slu.edu/services/dps/security_report/.

“If you looked at the Clery Act numbers and saw only three
sexual assaults in a whole calendar year, you’d say, ‘Oh, but we
know there were lots more sexual assaults than that.” Marijuana,
however, is reported more, due to the ease of detecting marijuana
use. “I’d say the numbers that we have are fairly accurate, though
I’m sure lots more people smoke marijuana than get caught,”
Remelius said.