Anti-4/20 Group Calls For Suits & Ties At CU-Boulder Friday

0

Marty Caivano/Colorado Daily
A reveler lights up at the 4/20 smoke out on the CU-Boulder campus last year.

The eternal culture battle between the straights and the stoners continues to play itself out as 4/20, the international cannabis holiday, becomes a lightning rod for controversy. The latest iteration of the battle has more than 350 University of Colorado – Boulder students RSVPing to a Facebook event encouraging students to wear a suit and tie to campus and around Boulder on Friday, April 20, to protest the 4/20 smoke out.

That’s right — they want you to pledge your allegiance to a morally, ethically and financially bankrupt system that has spent untold tax dollars, for the past 75 years, arresting millions of people for no better reason than that they choose to use a harmless plant. And they want you to do that by identifying with the overarching, corrupt power structure so strongly that you validate their tottering worldview by donning a suit, the symbol of their drab mindless conformity and hen-hearted unwillingness to rock the boat.

“4/20 is a well known date for students of CU,” the Facebook event description states. “Thousands of people flood Norlin Quad and smoke marijuana. For some students it’s not a huge deal, for others it’s a disgrace.” (If you really believe it’s a “disgrace” to openly and joyfully use a beneficial herb, than I’d suggest you have issues extending far beyond campus.) “Don’t forget the ones who par take [sic].”
“To show that not all of CU students are looking to have a free pass to smoke in front of a cop, in the words of Barney Stinson ‘Suit Up!’ So on 4/20 I want you to pull the tie out of the closet and show that CU can be a classy [sic]and not just baked.”

University of Colorado at Boulder
CU-Boulder philosophy professor Bradley Monton won’t be wearing a suit on 4/20. “It’s disappointing to me that CU, by its actions, is complicit in enforcing the immoral status quo of our nation’s oppressive marijuana laws,” he said.

At any rate, the event, called “Stay classy CU,” was started by junior Andrew Trujillo, who said he created the Facebook page earlier this month, but that people really began flocking to it on Wednesday, two days before 4/20, reports Whitney Bryen at Colorado Daily. The unofficial campus 4/20 smokeout has drawn crowds of up to 10,000 stoned revelers on April 20 each year to smoke cannabis and promote its legalization.
“I don’t know what happened, but we had about 190 people going last night on Facebook and then today it’s basically doubled,” Trujillo said on Wednesday.
Trujillo equivocated on whether marijuana use itself is wrong; he said the group is not meant to stand against legalization or cannabis use, but rather to encourage students not to use weed in public, “which gives employers and others as negative view of CU students.”
“I had a friend who went to New Zealand and she said they know about 4/20 in Boulder, so I figure if they know, so do employers,” Trujillo said. (Umm… Andrew? It’s called the Internet.)
Trujillo claimed that wearing professional business attire is a great way to show employers and the rest of the world that CU students can be “classy” and “respectable” and aren’t all “potheads like you see on the news on 4/20.”

The more obvious message, of course, will be closer to “We are spineless conformists — ideal fodder for the corporate machine which has taken over American government and is poisoning the planet in the name of short-sighted profits while continuing the baseless persecution of those who choose to use a harmless plant rather than harsh pharmaceuticals or poisonous alcohol.”
CU Student Government President Andrew Yoder, apparently just a peachy-keen prime example of the preceding paragraph, wrote on the anti-4/20 page: “This is an awesome idea! I fully support you guys.”
“I’ve never been supportive of 4/20,” said CU freshman Bradley Steinmeyer, who claimed the campus is full of students who share Trujillo’s anti-4/20 views. “I think it’s embarrassing for the campus.”
Even so, Steinmeyer said he disagrees with the way CU-Boulder is handling a crackdown on the event this year.
Freshman Jeff Carlson said 4/20 was an “unattractive quality” for CU when he was picking a college. “I’m tired of people assuming that I smoke marijuana simply because I’m a student at CU,” Carlson said. “By suiting up on Friday, I’m standing up to that stereotype.”
Hey, Jeff. Now you’ll have an excellent chance to get used to people assuming you’re a virgin, instead.
“The students participating in the 4/20 event are engaging in a grassroots non-violent act of civil disobedience to protest an immoral law,” wrote CU-Boulder philosophy professor Bradley Monton in the Daily Camera. “Laws against recreational marijuana use are immoral, because people who use marijuana aren’t harming themselves, or others.
“Moreover, there is a long and admirable tradition of non-violent civil disobedience at college campus in this country,” Professor Monton said, “from the protests in favor of civil rights laws to the protests against the Vietnam war. The 4/20 event should be seen in this vein.
“It’s disappointing to me that CU, by its actions, is complicit in enforcing the immoral status quo of our nation’s oppressive marijuana laws,” Monton wrote.
If you’d like to go offer some commentary on the “Stay classy CU” Facebook page, I’m certainly not going to discourage you.
Share.