Since the start of the winter quarter, Campus Safety has investigated 17 drug-related incidents in the dorms, or about two per week.

Of the 17, 13 have occurred in freshman dorms. The information was compiled from the weekly Crime Report that is published in the Clarion.

Are drugs, specifically marijuana, more prevalent on campus these days?

Or, are students simply getting caught more often?

Daniel Kast, director of the Office of Citizenship and Community Standards, believes the latter. Students aren’t engaging in drug use more, he said, but they are getting caught more often.

Drugs are “harder to isolate, harder to hide,” said Kast. Marijuana especially, is “relatively easy to find” due to its “distinctive smell that allows staff to pinpoint it,” added Kast.

According to Kast, the increase in drug-related offenses may simply be a matter of weather.

With the numerous heavy snowstorms since Christmas, said Kast, students have been staying inside and on-campus more often.

While it may seem that students are getting caught more frequently, of the overall number of crimes reported to Campus Safety, only “a very low percentage” are drug-related, said Tyrone Mills, associate director of the department.

In Clarion’s Crime Report 18 percent of the reported incidents on campus were drug-related since school began in January.

In accordance with the federal government’s Clery Act, on-campus police agencies are required to make public cumulative crime statistics from the previous three years every Oct. 1.

According to the 2006 report by Campus Safety, there were 89 drug law disciplinary referrals in 2005, up from 81 in 2004.

But, of the 583 crimes and offenses reported to Campus Safety in 2005, only 96 were drug-related.

Campus Safety sends all of its reports on drug offenses to Citizenship and Community Standards. According to Kast, of the 220 student cases sent to him during fall quarter 2006, only 43 were responsible for drug violations. This was a minor change from fall 2005 when 41 students were sanctioned for drug violations.

During the 2004-2005 academic year, there was a “huge drop” of over 50 percent in drug violations, said Kast, but that number has gone back to its average point and stayed there.

Although the percentage of reported crimes may be low, Mills believes that “more and more people [are] starting to experiment with [marijuana].” He added, “A lot [of this activity] started before students came to DU.”

Many students would agree. A male sophomore student, who asked to remain anonymous, began using marijuana the summer before freshman year of college. “I was curious to know what it was like,” he said. He continues to use marijuana in college because of the “interesting feeling” he gets when he is high. It “gives you different perspectives on different things,” and, it is a good “stress reliever,” he said.

Christine, a freshman accounting major who asked that only her first name be used, smoked marijuana for the first time during her freshman year of high school.

“My friends were doing it. It was really casual,” she said.

She has yet to use marijuana in college but says there is “more use here than there was at my high school.”

Some students, though, didn’t begin using the drug until they arrived at DU. Sarah, a sophomore who asked that only her first name be used, started using marijuana during freshman year of college “because I started partying a lot more and it was more available.”

Asked if she felt more pressure to use the drug in college, Sarah responded, “not more pressured, just more opportunity.”

The anonymous male interviewee agreed. “I don’t feel any pressure,” he said. “I smoke because I want to.”

Without the strict eye of parents, college provides more opportunity for students to use drugs.

There is an “issue with drugs” on this campus, but not a “major one,” said Mills.

A second male sophomore student who wished to remain anonymous said that marijuana is not as prevalent at DU in comparison to other colleges.

“DU is a more conservative university,” and this is “reflected in marijuana use,” he said.

A frequent marijuana user, he said he smokes three to four times a week. In college, he said, it is “nice to have an altered state of consciousness when partying” without drinking alcohol. He added, it’s “nice to sit with people and smoke and talk afterwards. It’s a good social activity.”

Marijuana use at DU may be less commonplace than most people think, but the use of harder drugs appears to be even less prevalent.

It is “very seldom that we have cases that are more hard-drug related,” said Mills. Campus Safety received no more than two calls about these drugs last year.

The second anonymous sophomore stated that he didn’t feel cocaine, specifically, was rampant on campus, but he added that the drug is “not something people really talk about a whole lot” since it has “more stigma attached.”

The Office of Citizenship and Community Standards has had only one substantiated case involving cocaine and a “handful” of drug dealing cases in the four years that Kast has been at DU although he does have “suspicions” that more serious drugs are being used.

This feeling was mirrored by Mills: the minimal reports of these drugs are “not to say it’s not here,” he said, just that it “hasn’t been brought to our [Campus Safety’s] attention.”

While marijuana use may appear to be increasing in occurrence, the actual frequency and prevalence is not escalating, Mills believes.

How prevalent one finds marijuana to be on campus “depends on your surroundings, your atmosphere, your classes,” said the first anonymous sophomore.

The prevalence of drugs, particularly marijuana, “are about the problem we think they are,” said Kast.