The University of Colorado will be on lockdown this Friday, complete with campus police conducting checkpoints and demanding proper ID from everyone in sight. The reason? Authorities want to finally end the school’s annual pro-pot rally.
If you spend April 20 this year in Boulder, Colorado, stay far, far away from the city’s major college campus, caution authorities. No, there is no bomb threat expected for this Friday at UC Boulder, nor are police preparing for any visiting dignitaries to address the students. The cause for heightened security this time around is something much more serious, it would seem. School officials are sick and tired of an annual event that has brought people from across both the state and the country to smoke marijuana on campus.
Students have been toking up on the school’s campus every 4/20 for years now, with the annual event bringing in around 10,000 participants just in 2011. In the past campus police have resorted to dousing students with water and snapping their photos to publish them on the Web, offering cash bounties for the identifications of those caught smoking up. This time, the answer isn’t just public humiliation, though. Instead the school will be instituting authoritarian rule for one day in hopes of at least ending what has proven to be a peaceful protest in years past.
"We're at that point where we're saying, 'Enough,'" CU-Boulder spokesperson Bronson Hilliard said on Friday, reports the city’s 9 News television. "We don't want this on our campus."
To keep any questionable activity to a minimum, anyone without a school-sanctioned ID will be banned from campus on Friday. The Nolin Quad, where Alex Douglas of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says he spotted 15,000 pro-pot ralliers in 2010, will be shut down entirely for the day.
