There has been a marked increase this fall in the number of Tufts undergraduates caught with marijuana, according to Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) Captain Mark Keith.
Keith said there were eight students caught either smoking or in possession of marijuana last fall between Sept. 1 through Nov. 27. In the same time period this fall, however, that number has jumped to 28 students.
While Keith did not have the exact data available for school years before the 2005-2006 academic year, he said that the number of incidents this fall certainly stands out.
"In my recollection, this fall has been uncharacteristically high in reviewing the last few years," he said.
Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter's data was in accordance with Keith's. She said in an e-mail to the Daily that her office, which also receives reports that come directly from residential staffers and don't go through TUPD, has heard of about 35 allegations of possession or use of marijuana so far this semester.
According to Keith, there are not any new TUPD initiatives that would account for an increase in the number of students caught.
"I think it's probably the result of [marijuana] being more prevalent on campus," he said.
Pointing to this, Keith said that officers have "on-viewed" many of the marijuana incidents this fall. "On-viewing" occurs when officers randomly catch students smoking in plain view, either outside or in dorms while making their normal rounds.
Last fall, there were no such incidents. The eight students caught were discovered only because a smoke alarm went off or someone reported the smell of marijuana.
Keith said that the main concern involving this increase in incidents is safety, particularly the risk of dorm fires.
"The increase in use is a concern, but a bigger concern is some of the safety issues that correspond with that," he said.
Carter expressed similar worries, saying that students may not realize they are putting their roommates and everyone else in the hall at risk when they choose to tamper with smoke detectors.
While the number of incidents where police have personally viewed marijuana use has increased this year, most of the calls TUPD receives are still because of smoke alarms: either one is going off in a room in response to smoke or someone has dismantled an alarm and disconnected its wires.
Unbeknownst to many students, trying to dismantle the detector sets off an alarm in the dorm's fire panel, which alerts officers.
According to Assistant Fire Marshal Wayne Springer, "bagging" the smoke alarms is probably much more prevalent than trying to dismantle them, because it's harder to detect. This technique, however, is much more dangerous than others.
To demonstrate the risks, Springer gave a hypothetical scenario in which a student puts a plastic bag, typically a grocery bag, over a smoke detector so that he can smoke (either tobacco or marijuana). If the student falls asleep and whatever he or she were smoking isn't completely out, it can start a smoldering fire, the smoke from which is deadly because of the carbon monoxide it creates.
The sprinkler won't go off unless the room reaches a temperature of over 135 degrees, and since the student bagged the smoke detector before he fell asleep, the results would be deadly, Springer said.
While he said there has not been a fire related to the careless disposal of smoking materials in the last two years, it is the third leading cause of on-campus fires.
Keith recalled an incident around ten years ago in Lewis hall that occurred for this reason. While no one was hurt and the fire was contained to one room, the whole hall suffered from extensive smoke and water damage.
Moving forward, Springer said that his office will try to increase its educational efforts.
"We're trying to be a little more proactive, to try to get the kids to think about the consequences of this risky behavior," Springer said. "But they don't think about it."
To that end, he recently met with the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) to discuss the smoking issue and decided to provide the ORLL with a hypothetical scenario, similar to the one he described above, that would be written out and placed in dorms to make students more aware of the dangers of smoking.
Keith and Carter said they will review the issue over winter break and decide how they can curb marijuana use.
"We are all concerned. We will review the semester's activity and see what broader actions are needed," Carter said.
Still, she said that her office is anticipating an increase, not a decrease, in the number of incidents over the following months because of the upcoming cold weather.
She also said that the increase in marijuana incidents "seems to be a national trend" and that her office tries hard to make sure students caught are getting help from Tufts' substance abuse counselors.
