4/20/2012 review

As the date 4/20/2013 approaches, it is a good time to provide a refresher of last year's 4/20 events at the University of Colorado as an update. Last year was the first time that CU Boulder officials made an effort to stop the event from taking place. University officials believed that the event was a distraction, especially since many of the participants are not even CU students or Boulder citizens.

One of the strategies used to stop the 4/20 celebration was the use of fish fertilizer on the Norlin Quadrangle. The campus was also closed off with the assistance of Boulder police. The only people  who were allowed to enter campus were those who could provide a CU Boulder identification card. The 4/20 celebration was successfully prevented from taking place on the Boulder campus as there was no gathering on the Norlin Quad.

An article last year by the Boulder Daily Camera reported that the 4/20 prevention plan was successful. The link is provided below, but we will sum of the main points of the article.

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_20441285/420-cu-boulder-closure-protests-marijuana

The article mentions that the celebration traditionally brought 10,000 people into campus. The Camera reported that a small gathering of people smoked marijuana on a lawn near the Duane Physics building. According to the article, 11 people were cited for trespassing, as well as one for marijuana possession.

The effort being used by CU officials to prevent the 4/20 celebration certainly came at a cost. The article reported that in 2011, CU spent $55,000 dollars dealing with the event and that it was thought to have cost more than twice this figure to prevent the event from taking place in 2012.

With previous year's events taking place...is it worth such a high cost to the university to prevent 4/20/2013 from taking place when we consider it will be on a saturday? Is the event worth stopping when there are no classes to disturb?  Or...is it worth the cost of preventing it from taking place on a Saturday to set a precedent for future years? Certainly these financial questions could become significant for CU officials dealing with this year's 4/20 event.