Nurse the Hate: Hate Campus Security

I was discussing an issue that a friend was having with his son.  His son got in trouble with college dorm security after it was discovered that they had been smoking marijuana in his room.  I like to picture the particular incident itself as follows… The young men, knowing they could get in trouble with pot in the dorm take every precaution to insure there will be no repercussions.  The risk of being tied up into legal and disciplinary trouble is mitigated by shoving a towel under the door and opening the window.  What could go wrong?  That way, when campus security walks by on their rounds, they couldn’t possibly notice the loud rap music, laughing, and extremely skunky smell in the hallway.  Not with that towel in place! 

Shockingly, security ferrets out this brazen lack of regard for the rules.  They knock on the door and the boys freak out.  The usual measures are taken by the boys.  Someone grabs a notebook and waves it towards the general direction of the open window.  One of them sprays an air freshener from an aerosol can, the sound of “Pffffffeeeeeewwwww” being clearly recognizable from the hallway outside the door.  Hopefully one of them says in a worried voice, “Bo cool!  Be cool!  Be cool!”  The music is snapped off.  After a painfully long delay from the time of the initial knock, the door is opened.

“Um, can I help you?”

The key in a situation like this is to deny everything.  All the players in this drama know that pot was being smoked in the room.  The rest of this conversation is just a ritual.  “What is going on here?”  We were just hanging out.  “Were you smoking anything in here?  This is a non-smoking facility.”  No.  No, we weren’t smoking anything.

The key is to deny, deny, deny.  There is no way petty authority figures are going to let this slide.  They live for incidents like this.  You need to change the conversation.  I heard Dennis Rodman tell a story about how Carmen Electra caught him in a Vegas hotel room with another woman.  Rodman told her there was no woman there.  Ms. Electra, being no fool, said she could see her on the bed.  Rodman denied a woman was there, until finally relented in saying that if a woman was there she must have fallen through the ceiling.  It’s hard to argue the facts when the facts themselves are up to debate.  This is an important lesson.  Make the existence of the facts the focus of the debate, not the facts themselves.

Of course, inexperience and youth led the boys astray.  The boys did not stick with their story, and that led to their downfall.  The paper tiger authority of campus security shook them down and then reported them to the real police.  Many threats of expulsion and a chain reaction of events that would lead to the stain of their “permanent record” were ushered forth by the never ending parade of authority figures.  There is no greater hammer to drop on a kid trying to make something of themselves than to suggest their future has just been pissed away because they smoked a joint.  I love the idea that a man’s future has been destroyed because of a small incident when he was 19.  “Mr. Smith.  Your credentials are beyond reproach.  National Honor Society.  Medals of Merit.  A resume that makes one weep with jealousy.  Letters of recommendation of the likes I have never seen.  However, upon further digging into your past, we have discovered an incident from 14 years ago involving an illegal substance.  Shame on you Sir!  How dare you masquerade as a qualified candidate!  Your past has caught up with you sir, and I must insist you exit this office immediately!”

I’m not a marijuana guy, which always shocks everyone in the mainstream world.  They assume that because I play music in a seedy underground country punk band, I must be involved with hard drugs and meaningless sex in what they must picture dressing rooms to look like from Bon Jovi videos.  I’m just not into it.  However, it seems ridiculous to me that marijuana has not been completely legalized yet.  When California legalized it for all intents and purposes, Doomsayers predicted that the very fabric of society would be ripped apart and the children would turn to hard drugs.  Of course, none of that has happened.  Data suggests that the under 21 crowd now uses marijuana recreationally instead of alcohol because it is so much more readily available to them.  That has led to a decrease in motor vehicle injuries and deaths in this age group as alcohol is much more dangerous to use while operating a vehicle.  So in this case, we need to call the police in on some 18-21 year old men that can have credit cards, serve in the army, get married, have a kid, buy a gun, but can’t smoke a small amount of pot in their living quarters?  They can’t just get a Campus Security slap on the wrist?

I am so glad I am not in these young men’s shoes.  Their parents and grandparents are going to react like a Dragnet episode.  It’s going to be hard to convince Grandma that her beloved grandson isn’t one of those “grass smoking, pill popping hippies that will do anything for kicks”.  As a society it was decided years ago that alcohol and nicotine were our accepted drugs.  Grandma has had 70 years of the alcohol lobbyists telling her how her poor grandson has slid down the slippery slope towards cocaine, PCP, heroin, and eventually madness.  There will be hand wringing and wild plans discussed like Rehab Facilities, Born Again Christianity, and pulling the poor boy from school to get him away from bad influences (his equally harmless friends).   This kid has no idea the dominos he has set in motion…

The key will be to lawyer up.  The system is set up that now someone will have to be paid off.  Someone will have to pay the court or a lawyer.  Someone else is getting a nice little check.  It will be the best case scenario to pay off the lawyer, who will have whatever ridiculous charge knocked down to a lesser equally ridiculous charge.  With that lesser charge will come the assurance of maintaining an unblemished “permanent record”.  I don’t know where the “permanent record” is stored.  I assume it is in an underground bank of servers somewhere in the plains of Topeka, Kansas tucked in next to a nuclear missile silo.  To not have that few keystrokes typed in to that data base indicating your degenerate past will be worth a couple G’s I suppose.

The lesson learned?  For God’s sake, don’t smoke pot in your room.  Also, if you are going to get caught, it’s way better to be caught with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol.  That’s good American fun!  Good luck boys!