Unlike more than 100 university presidents at some of the most prominent schools in the country, Penn State President Graham Spanier declined to join a controversial initiative that aims to “rethink the drinking age.”

But several of the 128 university presidents who have signed onto the Amethyst Initiative have asserted the group’s true purpose is to launch a discussion on college-age drinking, not overhaul a 24-year-old federal law.

A statement on the initiative’s Web site calls for an “informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.”

“[Twenty-one] is not working,” the statement reads.

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By Kristen Huth

Collegian Staff Writer

Last night, a national organization aiming to reform marijuana laws hosted its first Rally in the Valley discussion in 101 Thomas to raise awareness about legal concerns involving marijuana.

“We want to inform people about this issue and have some positive conversations about the marijuana issue,” Jason Bundy, co-president of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said.

Bundy told about 30 people that NORML is a resource for those who need legal advice, as well as an organization that promotes legislation to reform marijuana laws.

Andrew Shubin, a criminal defense attorney, was present to give legal advice concerning marijuana laws.

Shubin explained that a school zone has much harsher consequences for felonies than any other area.

“If you are within 1,000 feet of any part of Penn State University, whether it’s the 18th hole of the golf course, a garage that Penn State owns, the high school or a playground, that’s a school zone,” he said. “That’s basically all of State College.”

The mandatory minimum sentence for possession of marijuana is two to four years in a school zone, compared to probation to one month anywhere else, Shubin said.

“That’s the difference one foot can make,” he said.

Shubin gave advice on what to do if confronted by a police officer.

“Be courteous. … The first thing you should do is assert your right to counsel,” he said. “And without your consent, an officer needs a warrant to search your house.”

A big topic of the discussion was the use of student informants in drug busts.

Sam Richards, senior lecturer in sociology, said that a petition opposing the use of student informants in drug busts

was circulated among faculty members in the early ’90s, and only about 5 percent of the faculty did not sign it.

“It’s just not the kind of campus you want to create,” he said.

Shubin said the biggest problem at Penn State is not marijuana, but rather alcohol abuse and its “collateral crimes,” such as domestic abuse and drunk driving.

Nick Drewchin (freshman-economics) said that “everyone from Graham Spanier to the middle school kids at Mount Nittany … knows that kids in the frats get wasted, and then sexual assault happens.”

Richards said one of the concerns with the legality of marijuana is that there is not a national discussion about it.

“If I asked you how much marijuana is takes to get high, no one would know,” he said. “But we could all probably agree on how many drinks it takes to get drunk.”

Bundy said the idea that no amount of marijuana is lethal could be dangerous without any guidance.

“If you know no amount is toxic, how do you set your limits?” he said.

Bundy said that marijuana laws are based on “the worst of us, not the most of us.”

“There is a difference between use and abuse,” he said, adding that the group does not promote abuse.

Criminal charges were dropped after the convention. Activists called the situation unfair, a double standard.

By Daryl Lang

Collegian Staff Writer

Penn State is considering whether to punish three students who refused police orders to leave a university building during a July protest, the students said yesterday.

The students said the situation is unfair because their case has already been heard in court and the criminal charges against them were all dismissed.

“It’s just a pathetic attempt to try to pin something on us,” said Justin Leto (senior-computer engineering), who organized the protest.

The protest is the third recent incident in which Penn State’s Office of Judicial Affairs has taken on a controversial legal matter, including a case when the office declined to punish a football player charged with assault.

Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said yesterday that the university’s judicial process concerns whether students broke a university rule, something separate from a criminal charge.

The three student demonstrators — Leto, Robyn Stephens (senior-sociology) and Michelle Yates (junior-women’s studies) — each were called to meet with the director of judicial affairs. The meetings took place over the last two weeks.

Each declined to admit any wrongdoing and will have their case decided at judicial hearings that have yet to be scheduled.

Working as a group called “Redirection 2000″, the students waved signs and banners on July 10 to protest the failure of the National Governors’ Association Annual Meeting to respond to the menu of causes they support.

Several students climbed through a second-floor window in order to hang a sign on a balcony facing a governors event at the HUB-Robeson Center. Penn State Police Services ordered the students to leave and arrested five of them.

“Being on the ledge wasn’t something the university approved of, and it wasn’t safe,” said Mahon, who said he was present at the demonstration.

After their arrest, police charged all five students with “defiant trespass.”

At a July 20 preliminary hearing, District Justice Daniel Hoffman dismissed all the charges against the demonstrators.

But recently, three of the students were called before Joseph Puzycki, Penn State’s director of judicial affairs, for disciplinary action.

Penn State accused Leto, Stephens and Yates of “failure to comply with a directive” and “unauthorized use of university buildings/facilities,” the students said in a statement.

Penn State never figured out who the other two arrested demonstrators were, Leto said.

Puzycki allowed State College attorney Andy Shubin, who is representing the students free of charge, to sit in on one of the meetings, Shubin said.

Shubin wonders why the university keeps pursuing the case even after court testimony July 20 from Penn State University Relations Executive Director Steve MacCarthy. The students said MacCarthy had given them permission to be in the building.

“What’s upsetting here is that the university’s official and the top guy on the scene has already testified under oath,” Shubin said. “That testimony essentially exonerates them from any wrongdoing. . . . Of course, the university is a large institution and maybe the left hand isn’t talking to the right hand.”

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By Lynne Funk
and Daryl Lang

In a mix of education and activism, hundreds of students gathered on the Old Main lawn yesterday afternoon to wave signs and hear political speeches.

The event, called the “March for Democracy,” featured six speakers and a group of actors. The audience followed the speakers as they walked from Old Main lawn to the HUB lawn and back.

Sam Richards, a senior lecturer in sociology who helped organize the march, called the gathering a “classroom without walls,” and many of the students were there as part of an assignment in one of his classes.

But among messages about how big businesses control the government, cheering students gave the event the feel of a political rally.

“This march is about coming together and talking about ways in which we can empower ourselves,” Richards told the crowd through a bullhorn. “The system can change . . . It has changed in the past and it will change in the future.”

Speakers encouraged students to participate more in government, wrestling control away from the rich and spreading it among everyone equally.

“You may feel like the minority,” said Ken Clarke, director for the Penn State Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs. “But it has always been the creative minorities, as Martin Luther King, Jr., reminds us, who are at the vanguard of significant social and spiritual change.”

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Centre Daily Times, Blue Weekly, A conversation with defense attorney Andrew Shubin

Attorney Andrew Shubin takes on the kinds of cases that capture the popular imagination, make headlines and force us to face our values and fears. He represents confirmed and accused criminals of many stripes, from suspected offenders attempting to prove their innocence to incarcerated convicts claiming mistreatment. He also takes on civil rights claims and a host of constitutional matters, such as free speech cases. His work crosses federal, state and county jurisdictions. So what is he doing with a modest solo practice in State College? (more…)