“We hear a lot of rumors,” said Dan Werner, Head of Security and Safety, about drug use on campus, “but it is hard to get a good number because drugs are so easy to conceal.”

The existence of illicit drugs and the presence of those that use them on campus is no secret. The college employs a full-time Substance Abuse Counselor, entries appear in the Village Record and rumor is bandied about. There are questions, however, whose answers are not quite so clear.

“[The number of people who use illicit drugs] is a hard number to assess,” said Leo Offutt ’06. “But it is a number that is compounded by the rights of every student … whatever everyone chooses to do in the privacy of their own environments.”

Even Lori Wenner, Substance Abuse Counselor and Education Coordinator, is hard-pressed to state numbers of Kenyon students who use illicit drugs. Most of her information, like that which comes to Werner, is secondhand. She is only privy to information from those who are sent to her through judicial action—who can be “unwilling” to talk—and those that come to her of their own accord for help. “No one wants to ‘narc’ on [his or her] friends,” Wenner said.

The inherent atmosphere of Kenyon College may also compound the number of students who use illicit drugs. According to Alex Schmucki ’06 “the atmosphere that Kenyon promotes being friendly, being open with neighbors” makes illicit drugs more available. He continued, “you can go out on South quad on a nice day and find your way [to elicit drugs].” Schmucki believes this makes drugs easier to come by than in a city where “you have to know at least someone.”

However, Offutt believes it is not quite as easy to come by drugs on campus. “The remoteness of this campus and the seclusion of the environment results in a fairly efficient flow, very sporadic,” Offutt said. However, he continued, “any fan of that stuff is going to have their ways of locating it.”

Despite the ease of access, neither Schmucki nor Offutt believe that drugs are a widespread problem on the Kenyon campus. In fact, both see alcohol as a more dangerous threat to Kenyon students. According to Schmucki, “[alcohol’s] physical addictive tendencies, easy liver damage, and the prevalence over marijuana,” make it a “far more dangerous chemical than THC.”

Offutt agrees. “Alcohol use is the most debilitating factor of night life on campus,” he said. Offutt saw the recent tragedy as a case-in-point. “The great thing about this environment is that when people choose to make bad mistakes … 99 percent of the time you’ll have friends taking care of friends when they you know had too much to drink or whatever,” He said. “And that’s what Colin lacked that night.”

Despite alcohol’s prevalence, other drugs are also very widely used on Kenyon’s campus. “I can’t really say if everyone does it, but I’d say at least 85% of the people I know have smoked [marijuana] once,” Schmucki said.

Offutt believes the number of people who use marijuana is affected, at least in part, by Ohio’s liberal stance on marijuana. “Marijuana is treated very liberally in the state of Ohio, probably more than any other state that went for Bush in the election… and more than most Kerry states, too,” he said. According to the Ohio Revised Code, possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana is a minor misdemeanor, while possession of 100 to 200 grams is a misdemeanor in the fourth degree.

Kenyon College itself could be seen as liberal in its acceptance of marijuana. According to Werner, the protocol for a person caught smoking marijuana is much the same as that of an underage someone being caught with alcohol; in other words, the substance is confiscated and a report written. This is, itself, a reflection of Ohio’s stance on marijuana.

According to Werner, he spoke with the sheriff and they came to an agreement that Kenyon could handle marijuana infractions on campus. Werner said that marijuana infractions are also hard to prove because, despite the fact that security officers have kits to test substances for the presence of THC, the smell of smoke that grabs a security officer’s attention is not enough to prove that a person has been smoking marijuana.

Does Kenyon’s liberal stance on marijuana contribute to the number of students who use? Not according Schmucki. “I think that pot is fairly treated by the administration,” he said, “Gambier is kind of a restrictive and closed space. There’s not much activity and I feel that that is the primary thing that leads to drugs and alcohol use at Kenyon.”

Other, far more dangerous drugs are also present on Kenyon’s campus. “Coke is an unknown variable in every environment,” Offutt said. “It’s a very dangerous drug with very serious felonies behind it, and that has always translated to a very much underground cocaine environment,”

Schmucki too has heard cocaine was gaining popularity on campus. He also added “recent years past, its been heroin.” Neither Schmucki nor Offutt were able to say how many people used cocaine, and neither were Wenner nor Werner. Werner believes that this is due in part to the ease of hiding the paraphernalia involved in using cocaine. Unlike marijuana, he said, there is no smoke, no smell to alert security officers to someone using cocaine.

Wenner also pointed out another type of illicit drug that is often over looked: prescription drugs. She said many students were surprised to learn that taking prescription drugs not prescribed them could constitute a felony. Again unable to give statistics, Wenner said that substances like Ritalin and Adderall were widely used on campus and easily obtained because there are many people on campus who use those drugs legally. Werner noted that some students get these types of drugs by stealing them from friends and acquaintances. According to Werner, is it difficult to catch someone abusing prescription medications because they are easy to hide and do not rouse suspicion for the fact that many people are prescribed medications and have them in their room.

Wenner believes that there are no easy answers to curbing drug use. She points to the success of the recovery house for students recovering from addictions which will be back next year with,“about the same number of students as this year.”

Offutt believes it all comes down to students making responsible decisions. “The whole issue comes down to student responsibility,” he said. “Can students be trusted to exercise the freedom that they have during this time in their lives, before the responsibility of being modern 21st century adults falls upon all of our shoulders?”