Colorado University Bans 4/20

“I think 4/20 is the event by, for and about losers,” physics professor Jerry Peterson and chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly told the Boulder Daily Camera. “There’s no place for it on this campus.”

Apparently, the powers that be at Colorado University agree. For the 2nd year in a row CU has banned celebrating 4/20 even though the majority of voters in the state voted to make it legal last fall.

“4/20 is most certainly an unwelcome gathering on the campus,” said CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard.

4/20 based on the time 4:20 pm, when in 1971 a group of high school kids- calling themselves the “Waldos”- from San Rafael High School would meet after school at a Louis Pasteur statue on campus and smoke cannabis.

It then spread to the Grateful Dead scene, who rehearsed close by the school. The Waldos and the Dead had mutual friends and 4/20 became a code for smoking cannabis.

4/20 could be heard whispered by “Deadheads” for decades, but it was not until 1991, when former High Times editor Steve Bloom picked up a 4/20 flier and started writing about it in the magazine.

By the end of the 1990s, 4/20 had engulfed the cannabis nation. In 2010 and 2011, 4/20 sponsored events at CU drew over 12,000 people. The entire North Quad campus was engulfed in cannabis smoke.

The CU 4/20 crackdown began last year, and another ban will be announced next week. CU went to great lengths to shut down 4/20, even going so far as to dump piles of fish manure, fouling up the campus for all students, celebrating 4/20 or not. They also would not allow any visitors on campus, a move unheard of in recent academic history.

This year, 4/20 falls on a Saturday, and would not interfere with classes, 4/20 supporters contend.

CU still will not budge.

“We’ve got the library open on Saturday, and it’s two weeks before finals,” Hilliard said. “We’ve still got research going on in adjacent chemistry labs. We have faculty coming and going for meetings and visiting lectures. There are musical auditions. There’s a whole range of academic and research activities. This is a seven-day-a-week academic community.”

Mason Tvert, was part of the Amendment 64 campaign disagrees, and believes CU is going way too far when in comes to cannabis on campus.

“CU has a handful of football games in which they openly allow people to consume copious amounts of alcohol, and they don’t seem to think there’s any problem with that,” Tvert said. “Marijuana is less harmful, and I don’t think the event is nearly as big of a problem as they make it out to be.”