This is how Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s article “Why I Give My 9-year-old Pot” begins:
Question: Why are we giving our nine-year-old a marijuana cookie?
Answer: Because he can’t figure out how to use a bong.
The author, once a Fulbright scholar, is a Visiting Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at Brown University. No surprises there, right? On College Confidential, a site that enables students to discuss spew out questions on topics that range from SAT scores (“are they good enough?”) to Greek life (“which one is the Jewish frat?”), there is a thread entitled “Marijuana at Brown.”
The first post comes from dawgcity, a New Yorker who is deciding on applying to the university Early Decision. Believing that “the stereotype is obviously that everybody at Brown is a tree-hugging pot-smoking hippie,” the potential applicant is worried that non-smoking students like him/her would feel left out. Current Brown students later assured wide-eyed dawgcity that it’s okay, “it’s not like you’re going to have to get through legions and legions of people stoned out of their minds to get back to your dorm every night,” said Amadeuic.
With Tech House members sporting pink capes and chainmail, freshmen frolicking through the quads with requirements being the last thing on their minds, and of course with almost three-quarters of the undergrad population “very happy” at Brown, the weedles is really just the cherry on top. In the Tumblr blog “F*** Yeah Brown University,” there is a post on a study conducted by Brown, Boston University and UCLA showing that marijuana usage may also have benefits, like reducing cancer. The blogger comments, “F*** yeah medical research!” No wonder we’re labeled tree huggers.
Even if you missed 4/20 (which refers to lighting up on the 20th of April at 4:20AM and/or 4:20PM… or maybe you were just too high to tell time), you probably saw the healthy-sized pack of students thinking green on any one of the, well, greens. The mist, quite suitably, appeared to make this year’s 4/20 a rather poetic one. Despite the chill and the 25mph winds that effectively blew out many a lighter’s flame, students persisted to celebrate the day with a warm, tingly buzz. I was, unfortunately, catching up with work that was due for a class starting in 30, 29, crap. 28 minutes. Nevertheless, by 4:45PM, hungry, overly happy students piled into Tealuxe to admire their pastry collection, cracking up that “Holy s***! This one has CINNAMON on top, man.” Gotta love Brown.