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Break out your bongs.
The annual
marijuana-smoking celebration known as "4/20” is expected to draw a
crowd of 1,000 to 3,000 people to CU's Norlin Quadrangle today.
"4/20” - a public marijuana-smoking event which takes place at 4:20 p.m.
on the 20th day of the fourth month - normally happens on CU's Farrand
Field, but will be moved to Norlin Quad this year as Farrand undergoes
renovation.
Last year about 3,000 people stood on the field at 4:20 p.m. as a thick, visible plume of smoke rose above the crowd. The smell of burning marijuana wafted all the way to Colorado Ave. Last year's event also created national headlines after undercover
police officers took 150 random photos of pot-smokers and posted them
online, offering a $50 reward for each correctly identified picture.
“My advice is to buy masks” for this year's regalia, wrote a person
who identifies himself as CU senior Justin Patchen on the social
networking Web site Facebook.com.
There's little chance of photos being taken again this year, according to CU officials.
“The
general feeling is that the strategyŠ from last year was not the most
effective strategy,” CU-Boulder spokesperson Bronson Hilliard said.
Cmdr.
Brad Wiesley said the CU Police Department will be present on Norlin
Quad but will handle the situation based on how it unfolds.
“If it's low-key and nothing happens, we may not do much,” Wiesley said.
No group officially organizes 4/20 but information spreads through word-of-mouth. More than 1,074 people belong to a Facebook.com group called "4/20
Norlin Quad.” Another 334 belong to “Come 4/20, Farrand Field will have
grass on it whether it's finished or not!” and less than 50 belong to a
series of smaller groups like “I Swear that 4/20 is a holiday in
Boulder, CO/Farrand Field.” But this year's event is expected to be smaller than usual, partly
because of the change in venue and partly because of the somber campus
attitude caused by Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech.
“That's
just the wrong way to cap off the week,” Hilliard said. “[4/20] is not
meaningful, and this is a week that's fraught with meaning.”
April 20 is also the eighth anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., less than 60 miles from CU. Hilliard can't recall anyone smoking pot on Farrand Field that fateful day nearly a decade ago.
“I
walked around campus that day and everyone was glued to the TVs,” he
said. “The atmosphere [after Columbine] was eerily similar [to this
week's atmosphere].”
Rather than crackdown on 4/20, “we're really trying to appeal to the better angels of people's nature,” he said.
“We
want the students to realize it's an event Š [that] send(s) a message
to the public that confirms a stereotype that the public already has,
wrongly I think, of CU students.”
Mason Tvert, executive
director of the marijuana-legalization group Safer Alternative For
Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), disagrees.
“The university is
saying their image is being hurt because of peaceful students gathering
on Norlin Quad for a day, even though students throw glass bottles at
football games and get alcohol poisoning and that's what creates the
party-school reputation,” Tvert said.
Tvert said CU contacted him to ask how 4/20 festivities could be stopped.
“It's a spontaneous mob, so I don't really know what we can do about it,” Tvert said.
The
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and SAFER will
host smoke-free “marijuana educations” events on campus from 11 a.m. to
3 p.m. that proclaim marijuana is safer than alcohol. Fifty campuses
across the nation will have similar events today. Pot-education 4/20
events had been planned at Virginia Tech but are cancelled. |
