It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” —Samuel Adams

President Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote in his diary that President Nixon “emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” For those who are unaware of our past president’s racist and anti-semitic remarks, you are probably also unaware that he was successful in devising a system that circumvented the freedoms acquired by the civil rights movement. This system was illustrated in a 1968 letter by J. Edgar Hoover stating that, “Since the use of marijuana and other narcotics is widespread among members of the New Left, you should be alert to opportunities to have them arrested by local authorities on drug charges.” Ever since then, non-violent crimes of drug possession have been utilized as a tool to disproportionately strip the freedoms of youth and minorities at the will of law enforcement.

Today, according to NORML, 74% of all Americans arrested for marijuana offenses are under the age of 30. In large urban areas like New York City, African-Americans account for more than 50% of marijuana arrests despite the fact that they make up only 26% of the population. These massive civil rights violations on our citizenry has led to a prison-industrial complex that America can now proudly claim houses 25% of the world’s prisoners here in the land of the free. The advent of this new form of slavery has increased state and local expenditures on corrections at a rate of 2.5 times that of education from 1977 to 1999. Our universities are now directly competing for funding with the construction and staffing of state correctional institutions. Students not only suffer higher tuition costs because of this, but they also suffer at the hands of the Higher Education Act’s 1998 aid elimination penalty. This act removes federal financial aid to any student caught possessing any amount of drugs, and essentially reinforcing our school to prison pipeline.

Last week, Chancellor Gearhart reversed the new guidelines to equalize the penalties for misdemeanor alcohol and marijuana offenses that were approved by 67% of student voters, and a “vast majority” of the senior administration on the RazorCat Board. We were warned that to implement these guidelines, we were going to have to overcome some high hurdles, and this reversal was because the university did not want to send the wrong message. Unfortunately, these high hurdles of racism, fear-mongering, and ignorance have existed for over 40 years now, and the message that was communicated was the University of Arkansas wishes to perpetuate them. Marijuana reform is just another medium that we can utilize in overcoming these societal atrocities. Fortunately, this issue is generational, and the old guard will not last very long. This too shall pass…