The End of the Beginning

Where do I begin with this one?

I don't pretend to know everything (or even anything, to be honest) about how Loyola Marymount University establishes its drug policies. But after having been a part of the events of the last 72 or so hours here in the Deuce, I know enough to be able to say that something has to change.

Here's a little recap... Nick Stewart (star of my Cinematography Final) was laying in bed on Wednesday night, unable to sleep and very hungry because his host family had chosen not to feed him that particular evening. So he made a decision that changed the course of this semester for a lot of us: He rolled a joint and lit it up in his bedroom, confident that his host parents wouldn't smell it.

However, he woke up soon after to the sound of pounding on his door cutting through his headphones. It was his host father who had, in fact, smelled the weed, and had come to aggressively inform Nick it was "not okay." Regardless of what he said next, whether as Nick tells it, he said he wasn't going to tell the AIB, or as CJ in the office tells it, he said that he was, he did.

And Nick, being the honest guy that he is, admitted to it. So... Professor Howard Lavick was legally obligated to pass the information on to LMU whose policy is one of zero tolerance for any sort of drugs on study abroad programs. So on Friday, I got to see the best display of efficiency I have ever seen come out of LMU, and Nick was dragged away and put on an airplane for Los Angeles on Saturday morning.

Many many questions and problems with this scenario. I've been thinking and drinking on it for the past couple of days, and I am genuinely unhappy with a number of things:

First of all, it's important to get out of the way that Nick was an idiot. I do not deny that at all. As stated by numerous staff workers at the AIB, find a park, find an alley, but why, when you know you don't get along with your host family, would you blaze in your bedroom? But that's obvious. Let's go to the bigger issues here.

Loyola Marymount University... Whose side are you on? Where is the compassion and desire for justice that defines what I expect from a Jesuit school? Where is the university's responsibility to its students?

When Nick gets back, he will have an appeal, naturally, but even if he wins his appeal, he won't be coming back to Germany. Having forced him to fly home on his own dollar is already a thousand dollar penalty. To fly back is another thousand dollars, and while some Lions may be able to afford that, many cannot. And he can't enroll in classes in Westchester at this point in the semester. So he might as well have doused about $15 thousand in lighter fluid and burned it. At least that would have been entertaining.

And furthermore, what is up with this reefer madness in the judicial affairs office? Isn't marijuana just like a ticket in California these days? So many of my LMU friends have gotten caught with weed, and what happens to them? A tall glass of urine here and there for someone who's into that sort of thing to analyze, and Matt Smith never misses a class. How difficult would it be to do a trans-Atlantic appeal involving some letter writing or conference-calling, and finding a Deutsch man to examine Nick's liquid gold every now and then?

Here in the Deuce, it's actually legal to have 10 grams of weed on you.

Oh, and just for the record, apparently official judicial affairs policy is that students have to be 21 years old to drink in any country, but they are too afraid to try to enforce it. They're not interested in starting study abroad programs in Iran or Afghanistan.

So... to sum things up: Nick, it's sappy, but we're going to miss you. We'll be pouring out liquor for you all semester. I hope you find a way to put this all in perspective and find a little peace. Hopefully, this is how change starts.