cannabisnews.com: Sparking A Grass- Roots Debate





Sparking A Grass- Roots Debate
Posted by FoM on August 23, 2000 at 08:34:37 PT
By Kimberly Shearer Palmer
Source: Washington Post
Scarlett Swerdlow is a debating legend. Not only because she's won 49 competitions in a row--"Nobody will ever do that again," says her debate coach, Rusty McCrady--but because her last topic, legalizing marijuana, has turned into a crusade. And she even earned high school credit for it.Community service requirements are still in their formative years--Maryland mandated 60 hours prior to graduation in 1993; the District followed two years later with 100 hours. Swerdlow pushed the limits of approved activities by obtaining special signatures so she could volunteer to legalize marijuana.
In the coming school year, her activity raises questions that will continue to rankle administrators deciding what should be allowed and what shouldn't. Should students receive school credit volunteering for organizations known to protest through flag-burning demonstrations? Should time spent organizing gay outreach organizations receive credit? Should working for a white supremacy group be counted toward the required hours? Some would argue that schools should not censor students' political opinions; others would counter that schools should not support one side or the other on controversial issues.Three years of debates on the morality of genetic engineering or the merits of civil disobedience couldn't prepare the soft-spoken 18-year-old for the subject she chose for her senior year. Last fall, as Swerdlow, then a student at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, and McCrady looked through newspapers for her final debate topic, articles on medical marijuana caught their eyes.After a quick Internet search, they decided there was enough material to make a substantive case for legalization of the drug. Swerdlow, a brown-eyed redhead with Geena Davis lips, never expected judges to deduct points because of her subject.But at her Montgomery County competition against other area high school students, one judge told her that it was an "inappropriate topic" for a high school debate and held it against her in the scoring. Another judge liked her performance so much that she had enough points to continue to the final round, where she won first place. But for Swerdlow, it was the principle that mattered."It wasn't until the judges said it was inappropriate that I felt really angry and realized firsthand that people have a bias," she says. She contacted one of the organizations that helped her prepare for her debate, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), which lobbies for legalization, and offered to volunteer after school. "I thought volunteering would be a way to channel my anger, to do something productive with it," she explains.Before beginning her debate research, she says, she never questioned the illegality of the drug, assuming "it must be illegal for a reason." Within a few months, however, Swerdlow learned more about the effects of prohibiting marijuana, and became an advocate of legalization. While she doesn't know anyone personally who has been hurt by the ban, she says she doesn't think it's right that students can lose their federal loans after getting caught with marijuana, and that even medical marijuana is illegal in most states.After almost a year of research, she has whittled down her beliefs: regulation, but not incarceration. The government should monitor marijuana, she says, as it monitors alcohol and tobacco, with a minimum age requirement (18), penalties for driving under the influence (losing your license) and a fine for underage smoking (and maybe parent notification)."If there were regulations, fewer minors would be able to get access to marijuana," she says in a soothing, steady voice. MPP doesn't encourage people to smoke marijuana, she adds.She wants the current laws to be changed gradually to prevent legal confusion and drug abuse. Perhaps adults should be allowed to grow the drug in their homes before the organization of large-scale distribution, she explains.The Capitol Hill headquarters of MPP is a shorts-and-T-shirts kind of office, filled with books and reports on marijuana legalization. Swerdlow, who has been promoted to intern status after volunteering during the school year, arrives just before 10 a.m. No one answers her intercom calls to let her in. She drops into the cafe next door to wait for someone to arrive with a key.Over a bottle of apple juice, she tries to explain why she wants to help people she doesn't even know. Her mother, a social worker in Rockville, taught her compassion, she says, and her father, a telecommunications engineer, taught her to be critical, which led her to question the current drug laws. "In some ways I call him cynical, but it's more that he's just questioning things," she says.Once the MPP director arrives and lets her into the office, she gets to work. She logs onto the Internet, searches for a report on local ordinances and orders it over the phone. Stacks of reports have collected on and above her desk. She is trying to put together data to show the effect of local ordinances, which vary slightly across the country.Frank Stetson, Swerdlow's principal at Walter Johnson High School, defends his school's decision to approve volunteer work at MPP. "We're not in the position of censoring ideas that students have," he says. "It bothers me [that] . . . this is considered an illegal activity, but this organization [MPP] is not illegal, and all sorts of groups throughout this nation's history have lobbied against illegal things."But usually they haven't received school credit for it.National Implications: While not all school districts follow the path of the Bethesda school, which is in an affluent, liberal suburb, students in other parts of the nation are also raising questions about what can qualify as required volunteer work.Powered by the twin goals of teaching teenagers to be responsible citizens and giving local organizations much-needed help, community service requirements have spread since the 1980s. A 1999 U.S. Department of Education report shows that 83 percent of public high schools recognize community service in some way. Volunteering for pro-drug organizations probably wasn't exactly what the early advocates of the requirements had in mind, and even in the same school district, students have different rules.Some local schools are setting strict limits. Ryan Peene, a senior at Hawthorne High in Hawthorne, N.J., spent hundreds of hours volunteering as the state chairman of New York Young Republicans, but couldn't get those hours recorded on his transcript. He says of his school administrators, "They interpret it as too political. They think that if they gave me credit for that, it would be preferential treatment to one party. . . . I mean, you are serving the government, you are keeping democracy alive."Joan Hall, Peene's principal, explains that she doesn't approve political volunteer work because "we try hard to stay apolitical. We want to encourage kids to be independent and to base their work on giving to those in need." Candidates, in her opinion, don't make the cut.In Montgomery County, on the other hand, involvement in political campaigns is encouraged. Kristine Leary, student service learning specialist for Montgomery County public schools, says students are encouraged to identify an issue in their community and to work toward changing it. "Part of being an engaged and responsible citizen means being engaged in the process of how our government functions," she says.Volunteering for political campaigns is allowed at District public high schools, but only when the student comes up with the idea on his own. Beverly O'Bryant, program director for D.C. public schools, says, "No one in the school system can give [students] to one candidate over another . . . if they select a place on their own, we encourage them to check with a coordinator at their school."Even in liberal Montgomery County, some restrictions apply. Religious-education or faith-related work doesn't count toward the requirement unless it benefits the larger community. Helen Ryan, assistant principal at Rockville's Richard Montgomery High School, says she discourages church-related activities because it violates the separation of church and state: "We don't count synagogue or church work, because it doesn't really have anything to do with school beliefs."Even Stetson placed limits on Swerdlow's activism. "One thing Scarlett did not do that would have been a problem is that she didn't idealize any of the policies and bring them to school. She did not become disruptive to the school," he says.If schools really aren't in the business of censoring ideas, then can students volunteer for organizations that are openly racist or violent? Or, on a less extreme level, could students receive credit for volunteering at an abortion clinic? Or at an organization of the religious right?According to Stetson, the answer is yes: "We can have legitimate questions about [the organization's] purpose . . . but what I and other principals concern ourselves with is whether they have their hours," he says.If a student wanted to work for neo-Nazis, for example, "we would have to ask, 'Is it illegal? Are these off-limits kinds of places?' That's a real problem with the guidelines--because they're so wide open, it's really questionable what you can restrict," Stetson says.Interpretation of Montgomery County's guidelines varies from school to school. So far, few students have tested the boundaries as Swerdlow has.At Home With Activism: Swerdlow's parents, now divorced, say they are proud of their daughter. They have seen her lobby for other causes before, including gay rights and feminism. She is a woman of many passions, including less politically oriented ones.Her bedroom looks like a museum display on coming of age in America: seashells, hand weights, a closetful of shoes, the Ann Taylor plastic bag that held her graduation dress. She has frog lights, frog stuffed animals, and a frog clock that ribbets on the hour. A green amphibian-shaped pillow lies sprawled across her leopard-print sheets. "You know when you're young, and a parent buys you a toy, it sticks with you," she explains, smiling.Her father's house has hosted many late-night discussions between Swerdlow and Keely Owens, a close friend who joined her at MPP last spring. They usually eat mounds of burritos, nachos or ramen noodles--lots of ramen noodles--while discussing Ayn Rand, Sartre and marijuana initiatives.Owens and Swerdlow even met over an adventure. In the seventh grade, both girls wanted to go on a school trip to the Amazon rain forest, and started spending time together at the planning meetings.They created two zines, which they photocopied at Kinko's and distributed to their friends. The zines included poetry and discussions of the role of men in feminism.Working at MPP enhanced their visibility at school. As other students heard about their volunteer work, Swerdlow and Owens became mini-celebrities. People they hadn't met before would come up to them between classes and say they had heard they were trying to legalize marijuana.Not everyone understood their work. "A lot of them didn't know us. Some people were like, 'Whoa, dude, can I volunteer, too? Will they give me weed?' I just said, 'Go for it. You'll be stuffing envelopes for 10 minutes, and you'll be outta there,' " Owens recalls.Some encouraging students were in the group Swerdlow calls "stoners," who are known for smoking pot. She doesn't want to say if she also fits into that category. "Any way I answer that question, people would make a generalization about me." She says her own drug habits don't matter, anyway. "This was never about me wanting to get high, but about educating people."Swerdlow didn't even show up at the marijuana legalization protest near the Mall on the Fourth of July. "People think they're being active" by protesting, she says, "but what's noble about MPP is that we're going in every day to work on this."College Plans: On a recent college orientation trip on the West Coast, Swerdlow began planning a chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. She stopped to talk with a street vendor selling posters that sported shuch slogans as, "War on drugs, poor on drugs," suggesting that making drug use illegal is unfairly directed at poor people. He told her that students were frustrated with recent drug-related arrests.A meeting about student clubs gave her hope that her campus would support her activism. The director of student activities told her that he mediated relations between students and police at protests, and said the school even pays a lawyer to defend students if they are arrested while protesting.As she and other incoming freshmen made small talk between orientation activities, they spoke about their summer jobs. Most worked in retail or as waiters. When she told them about her work at MPP, "some people got quiet. . . . No one's like, 'You're a delinquent,' but probably people who are quiet think that. . . . I know people will make generalizations about anyone. I'd rather not get hung up on it," she says.To create a Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter, she needs four other students to agree to be members, which she doesn't think will be too difficult. Her first priority will be raising awareness about the effects of banning marijuana use on campus. She doesn't think, for example, that most students realize that the 1998 federal Higher Education Act permits college loans to be revoked for federal drug violations.Swerdlow wants to focus on legalizing marijuana when she's in college rather than on gay rights or feminism because it is, she says, "the most pressing issue in the U.S. right now. People are going to jail. . . . No one is going to jail because they're a woman."The activist's college of choice? The University of California at Berkeley.By Kimberly Shearer Palmer, Washington Post Staff WriterSource: Washington Post (DC)Published: Wednesday, August 23, 2000; Page C01 Contact: letterstoed washpost.comAddress: 1150 15th Street NorthwestWashington, DC 20071Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/© 2000 The Washington Post Company Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Related Articles & Web Sites:Marijuana Policy Projecthttp://www.mpp.orgS.S.D.P.http://www.ssdp.org/ Teen's Pot Project Fulfills Graduation Requirementhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6266.shtmlHigh School Volunteers Go To Pothttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6195.shtmlStudents Volunteer on Burning Issuehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6182.shtml 
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on August 23, 2000 at 10:50:07 PT:
Serves the b*****ds right
My State of MD has forgotten some very basic elements of the Constitution:13th Amendment:"Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or an place subject to their jurisdiction.Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."Forced public service definitely fits this category.14th Amendment: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.So when a bright young lady turns the tables on her would-be Orwellian mental jailers by volunteering for an organization most of them disapprove of, I can only smile at their cranial gear-jamming.
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