On April 20, at both 4:20 a.m. and p.m., for the third year in a row, Director of Community Safety Gary Granger provided “blunts” in the form of Voodoo donuts in the Student Union. Granger has been putting on the event since 2011 with the intention of engaging students about the Alcohol and Other Drugs Policy and improving CSO-student relations.
“In December 2010, anonymous students made up a poster of me and put it up around campus,” Granger says. “It was one of several satirical posters of me that year and I took it as both a caution about students who were not happy with changes in how we engaged AOD issues on campus, and as an opportunity for me to reach out.”
Granger took advantage of the attention he was being given to advertise the new event.
“It took me about two months of thinking and talking with staff and students about the poster, what it meant, and what I could do when 4/20 rolled around. I was talking about it at the end of a meeting one day when a staff member mentioned that Voodoo makes a maple blazer blunt. That was the spark I needed and the rest fell into place. I had CSO TallPawl O’Connor make a satire of the satire, I pre-paid for a few hundred donuts, and when I showed up at 4:20 a.m. on 4/20 in 2011 there were a couple dozen students waiting who thought I was actually not going to show up.”
After reading reports of Reed students smoking marijuana on 4/20 in the SU, Granger considered it necessary to create an environment that all students would feel comfortable in.
“I had several goals around 4/20,” Granger says. “One was to let students know that it is possible to simultaneously do my work responsibly and not take myself too seriously. I wanted to show that students making fun of me was okay and that I had no intention of backing off reasonable AOD engagement just because of a satirical poster. I also wanted to help the community reclaim the SU and the campus…and do it without ‘law-enforcement style’ enforcement.”
Granger says the event shows him that individuals in the community do not have to agree on everything to be supportive of one another.
Community Safety Officers, according to Granger, work as they normally do on weekends.
“I don’t expect my event to prevent any particular students from smoking pot on 4/20, rather I wanted to redirect the energy of the day from possible conflict and tension to laughter and Reed-like irony.”
According to Dean of Students Mike Brody, the 4/20 donut giveaway event was successful.
“There were hundreds of smiling students taking a break from studies to eat some donuts and just hang out with each other and some Community Safety and Student Services staff for a bit,” Brody says.
Brody knows that students across the country see 4/20 as an excuse to smoke weed publicly, but “Reed’s AOD Policy is in full effect 365 days a year, so in that way today was no different than any other day on campus. The event is a way to connect with students on 4/20 that is neither a hard-core enforcement statement, nor a blind eye, benign neglect.”
He sees it as, “a balance. Yes, the AOD Policy remains in effect and the college will respond according to our policies to any students smoking weed on that day, just as we do on any other day. And on the other hand, there’s no need for this to be an acrimonious relationship. Let’s have some donuts and some fun together, as members of one community devoted to Reed College.”