Metropolitan Police officers arrested two students Friday for possession of cocaine, ecstasy pills, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Officers seized two small bags with less than a gram of cocaine, nine ecstasy pills, “a small amount” of marijuana and drug paraphernalia from the students, both 19-year-old females, in Munson Hall, according to MPD documents and University Police Department captain Mark Balazik.
Two UPD officers smelled a marijuana-like odor while walking past Alexandra Brown’s and Calle Knight’s seventh-floor room during a routine patrol. They entered the unlocked room at 1:31 a.m., according to the documents.
The officers saw one student as they entered the room, and discovered another in the closet during a sweep. They also found a glass pipe in the adjacent bathroom.
The students then turned over the other drugs to the officers. Both students were immediately taken into custody by MPD.
Brown and Knight were both referred to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities for disciplinary action.
Possession of any drug – excluding less than one ounce marijuana – is considered a major offense under University policy, likely leading to suspension.
Students who are repeat offenders could lose housing or face probation.
Thirteen drug arrests were made on the Foggy Bottom campus in 2010, according to the most recent and official UPD crime statistics.
UPD Chief Kevin Hay said in June that 90 percent of drug violations involve marijuana.
A $1 bill? Really?
Yeah I definitely always break out my Grover ($1000 bill) when I do blow. Anything else is amateur night.
This article is inappropriate, invasive, and cruel.
Please do explain how this article is “inappropriate, invasive, and cruel”? All of this information can be found through google because they committed a crime and are above the age of 18…. While the hatchet doesn’t generally write unbiased articles this was a pretty tame one… SO I ask how this is inappropriate, invasive and cruel?
This article is inappropriate, invasive, and cruel because the GW Hatchet will never update us on their story. If these two girls are in fact innocent the Hatchet will not let us know. They will not apologize.
This is not news. Two girls getting arrested for a personal amount of drugs has NO EFFECT on GW’s campus or any of our lives.
Just because something is legal and allowed to publish does not mean it NEEDS to be published. The Hatchet does an incredibly poor and unreliable job covering student-life and student arrests. The Hatchet threw this on the front page for the same reason OK! Magazine covers Kim and Kanye, to attract viewers.
This reminds me of when The Hatchet decided to describe what amounted to a fight, as a hate crime in the title, which brought awful and misguided attention to our school.
Shame on you Hatchet for stooping to this level.
I am an alumna and parent of a student on the same floor as the incident in Munson. While your reporting did not stray from the facts, the two girls identified have made a grievous mistake and are suffering mightily for it. Perhaps keeping their names anonymous until more facts are discovered or a sentence is set down would be appropriate here. The girls are trying to restore their lives and learn from their actions. We do not want to push them out of the GWU community, but to embrace them and to help them. Please consider feelings along with reporting the facts
Well put– lets not ruin these girls futures
Agreed! There are more pressing stores such as the living conditions in dorm rooms, the professors who push their own political beliefs in their class, an old library, outdated classrooms, etc.
It’s inappropriate, invasive, and cruel because they have gone through enough and as previously mentioned, this has NO impact whatsoever on the University. I do understand that this is news and the news needs to be reported but, c’mon, was it necessary to put their names in flashing neon lights, so to speak?
this is what you will find in 20% of dorm rooms
Stupid to do it in your res hall ladies!!
Do you think if it was two male students people would be claiming this was cruel?
Restore their lives and learn from their actions? Embrace them to help them? Consider feelings when reporting facts? That’s hilarious!
How about something about personal responsibility and dealing with the aftermath of your choices and actions? Oh no wait, that’s inappropriate too right?
The Hatchet therefore did nothing wrong in publicizing the names of the students who were arrested. Arrests by the MPD and other local law enforcement agencies are public records.
These two women have allegedly committed a crime and will have an opportunity to defend themselves in court. I have no doubt their parents will spare no expense on lawyers, therapists, experts, etc in an effort to minimize the potential legal consequences of their daughters’ alleged criminal activity.
The Hatchet has, I think, a responsibility to its readers to pursue this story and continue to report on it, especially the outcome of any legal proceedings against the suspects. There is nothing “cruel” in reporting the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. If the charges are dropped, they plead guilty, are found not guilty, or whatever the outcome, The Hatchet’s readers need to know.
The Hatchet is a newspaper, not a social service organization. It is staffed by (student) reporters/editors, not therapists.
Both of the women arrested in this case are over 18, legally adults, and responsible for the consequences of their decisions. If the facts of the case are as reported in the Hatchet, I cannot imagine anyone agreeing that possession/use of drugs such as ecstacy and/or cocaine is a “learning experience” from which they should be cossetted and sheltered by their “helicopter parents” and doted on by Univesity staffers. And, they are not entitled to special treatment by The Hatchet.
Also, I cannot agree that this incident has “no impact” on the University. It is an (alleged) act bringing the entire student body in to disrepute and also burdens University administrators, as well as the local police, with additional work.
Frankly, I hope the Hatchet’s ongoing coverage or these sorts of (hopefully rare) incidents serve as a warning to other students (and their doting parents) that if you are arrested by the MPD for crimes committed on campus your name and the offenses for which you are charged will be (accuately) reported in the paper. The article(s) will most likely surface during any internet-based background check and potentially damage the arrestee’s future employment prospects.
But, that is why The Hatchet needs to operate at the highest level of journalistic ethics in these sorts of situations so that post-arrest outcomes are also reported accurately and fairly.
Finally, I am surprised at fellow GW graduate Marcia Rosen’s assertion that “[w]e do not want to push them (the arrested students) out of the GWU community, but to embrace them and to help them.”
I’m not wanting to “embrace” and “help” GWU students who wantonly violate both University policies and the law when it comes to illicit narcotics, thanks very much. I don’t know how you raised your children, Marcia, but if I had called my parents 35 years while a GW student to tell them I had been arrested for drug possession, I’d probably still be in the DC Jail today.
Curmudgeon, if my math is correct I peg you at around 60 years old. I hate to say it, but you clearly come from a different time. I disagree with most of you comment, there is just a gap between the way our generation feels about these laws and the way yours does. But I’ll focus on two major points; first being the Hatchet’s role in this, and the second being the impact.
The Hatchet is not a BAD newspaper. But the Hatchet also has many severe limitations. We both agree for the Hatchet to run this article they also ought to run one or two more either exonerating these girls or describing their punishments. BUT THAT WON’T HAPPEN. The Hatchet has very limited column space and the writers there are no less lazy and uncreative than the rest of their brethren in the Journalism field. This story fell in their laps. It would take at least twice as much research to cover the trial. The Hatchet LOVES printing names of the accused without any follow up.
The next point I have, is that as an active student, two people getting arrested for drug usage has no impact on my life or my university. Maybe this is because I am closer to the day I was born than the day I will become a member of the AARP, but the girls’ actions bring considerably less disrepute to our university than say Carlos Slim getting an honorary degree. You say this “burdens University administrators…with additional work.” If the qualification for news was something that created burdensome paperwork, the Hatchet would be 250 pages an issue and we would learn every time that a student registers for a class late.
I would MUCH rather the Hatchet post the name of every student caught plagiarizing than every student caught with plants that were processed the “wrong” way. Plagiarizing also burdens the university with work, so clearly it passes your bar for what ought to be printed.
Maybe if I, like you, lived through the Nixon Administration I would understand the war on drugs and the punishment these girls may receive. But luckily, people like you won’t be voting for many more decades, so people like us can figure out rational policies that don’t turn the sick and confused into criminals.
Photo illustration with a hard news story? Seriously? That’s a joke. Also, I think the four sexual abuses reported in two weeks article is much more of pressing issue than some featuresque, drug bust story posing as news (yet the latter gets a front page, under the fold spot while the former gets a column). An extended paragraph in the crime log would have done a better job at informing the GW community of these events.
13 arrests in 2010? Looks like some of these UPD officers are looking for a promotion to WMATA. LOL.
Alum cu. is absolutly correct, and aaron G, your opinions are ridiculous and highly suggestive of your own likely illicit behavior. The fact of the matter is, this kind of stuff is happening all over campus under the nose of the administration of most universities. People are stupid for not being smart about there actions, and at least for those who are smart, a sort of natural section like this is welcomed and supported.
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
*selection
(fyi, im a current senior too, no generation gap here)