March 20, 2011 - 4:31pm
In Other Ivory Towers: Pot promoted as alcohol alternative
BY SUZANNE JACOBS
Last Thursday was the first day of National Alcohol Awareness Month, and to mark the occasion, students on more than 80 college campuses across the country rallied last week to support marijuana as an alternative to alcohol, according to an April 1 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation — a national non-profit organization devoted to educating people on the relative safety of marijuana versus alcohol — organized the “Nationwide Day of Action” to promote marijuana as a safer alternative to alcohol.
According to the Chronicle, students who took part in the rallies asked their college presidents to sign the Emerald Initiative — a document promising “informed and dispassionate public debate” on marijuana use.
While 135 college presidents have signed the Amethyst Initiative — which calls for the drinking age to be lowered — none signed the Emerald Initiative when asked last Thursday, the Chronicle reported.
LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL RAISES GPA'S
At Loyola Law School at Los Angeles, all current students and alumni who graduated as early as 2007 are about to get boosts in their grade point averages, according to an April 1 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The law school — ranked seventh out of 20 California law schools approved by the American Bar Association — is adjusting its grading system to reflect more accurately the academic quality of its students, the article reported. Those who are affected by the change will see their GPAs increase one-third of a point. This will cause letter grades to rise, turning a B into a B+ and a B+ into an A-.
Loyola Law School Dean Victor Gold said in the article that the boost will help the school’s students as they enter a competitive job market.
“We concluded that the grading curve was sending incorrect information about our students,” Gold said in the article. “And, frankly, it was putting them at an unfair competitive disadvantage in a pretty tough job market.”
NAACP SUES STATE OF GEORGIA
The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia, claiming that the state “systematically” under funds Georgia’s three black public universities — Albany State University, Fort Valley State University and Savannah State University — according to an April 2 report by The Associated Press.
According to the AP, the lawsuit was based on a 2008 report by The Legal Defense Coalition for the Preservation of Public Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The report claims that the state violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment by not providing adequate funding for the state's three black colleges.
According to the article, the report asserts that discrimination by university administrators resulted in the three schools having “second-class status” and “de facto segregation.”
