<p>I'm dumb. I just got in-school suspension for 7 days because of possessing a small quantity of marijuana in my room. I go to a boarding school and the just happened to do a room search the very day I was going to get rid of it. I did not use any of it.</p>
<p>I was accepted to Duke ED in December, and now my GC has to report this to Duke. Is there any hope for me? Please help.</p>
<p>If your GC reports: suspension for drug possession, you have a problem.</p>
<p>If your GC reports: suspension for possession of a small amount of marijuana, I think you’d be ok. </p>
<p>How friendly are you with the GC? Be really contrite and ask the GC to be as specific as possible.</p>
<p>We’re supposed to feel sorry for you when you write this on “Parties at Duke”…
Do you think if you call it marijuana it sounds more naive?</p>
<p>I am pretty friendly with my GC. I could ask her to be as specific as possible, but will that “small amount” portion make all the difference?</p>
<p>Ok so here’s the story. I went to Binghamton, NY this past weekend to visit a friend at college and I met a few of his friends. One of them gave me a small amount of marijuana. It was barely half a gram, but I didn’t think about it and I took it. This was on Saturday. This afternoon in school, for some reason, security and the dean of student life search my room and go through every single little thing i had and moved my furniture and everything. And they notified me today at 3 pm.</p>
<p>I did not use it. But now, I’m in this mess. I am very stressed and I am not sure what to do. I have to write a full detailed explanation of what happened and why I am being suspended, but my concern is how the Dean of Undergrad admissions will look at me…as an accepted ED applicant, who was dumb enough to get caught up in this, and when there are 31,000 RD applicants that certainly contain more deserving people than I.</p>
<p>I worked so hard for 4 years to make it and I compromised my acceptance in a careless instant. I need help writing the best explanation I possibly can to help my situation. Any advice?</p>
<p>You may have already seen this, but here’s an article from the NY Times about disclosing disciplinary infractions. However, it’s more from the application point of view, not the post-admittance point of view:</p>
<p>[Disclose</a> Disciplinary Infractions, Admissions Officials Say - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/infractions/]Disclose”>Disclose Disciplinary Infractions, Admissions Officials Say - The New York Times)</p>
<p>take a drug test asap and
idk</p>
<p>Deans of Students at boarding schools don’t do random room searches- they must have had a reason to think they would find something. I would stay as clean as possible and make it to graduation without another single incident. A 7 day suspension is better than expulsion…</p>
<p>@baystateresident…actually they do our boarding school has random room checks of all the students to do there best to insure that drug use is difficult as possible.</p>
<p>As far as the OP…I think you screwed up big time and you better talk with your GC about what must be included on your school record. This might just be a very very hard lesson if Duke decided to rescind. I would not wait to talk with the GC do it now.</p>
<p>Like you said Duke has many many other applicants that they could fill your space with so it is nothing for them to change their mind. </p>
<p>PS you might want to come clear to your parents.</p>
<p>submit to a drug test so at least they’ll know you didn’t actually use the pot.</p>
<p>^^ that will help, I think. Assuming you didn’t use it at all.</p>
<p>When I think of my D’s friend who got deferred at Duke, and the smart, well rounded, drugfree/party free young woman and then read your post… well it makes me sad. </p>
<p>I would think somewhere in your letter you might want to write something about now seeing that pot is illegal and you have no intention of using it ever again. (But only if that is the truth) and as others suggested take a drug test asap.</p>
<p>I googled how many joints in a gram. </p>
<p>We’re talking about 1-2 marijuana cigarettes. This kid is not going to get his life ruined over 1-2 joints. Taking a drug test will not make any difference. Promising to never to it again WILL get you rescinded because they will know that you are lying. No matter what, they will know that you occasionally smoke pot, and there is a decent chance that they do to. So what. If they rescinded every kid who smoked a little pot, the class would get much much smaller. It’s not THAT big of a deal in college. In some jurisdictions, that amount has been decriminalized. The penalties for speeding are greater. </p>
<p>By having the guidance counselor specify the amount as less than half of a gram, and you specifying the amount as “a couple of joints”, they will know that you’re talking minimal recreational use, no intent to distribute, nothing to get worked up over. </p>
<p>Be remorseful about breaking the school’s rules, but trying to get them to believe that you never inhaled didn’t work for Clinton, and it won’t work for you either. </p>
<p>I could be wrong, but in my opinion, this will not get you rescinded if the facts are clear.</p>
<p>By the way, you said you didn’t use this pot, but if you’ve used any marijuana is the last 30-something days, it will still show up on a test. So only submit to a test if you have not used any marijuana in that time frame. If you have… then you got some ‘splainin’ to do…</p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad I don’t think the only issue here is having the pot. The bigger issues seem to be that A) he broke explicit schools rules by having it, which wouldn’t look good to any college
B) he had it on school property, which I’m guessing is illegal and paints this in a worse light.</p>
<p>Yes, colleges realize a lot of kids drink and/or smoke, however doing so on school property and in the process breaking school rules will be the major issues here, probably.</p>
<p>Submitting to the drug test (if he passes) will show that he didn’t use the drug. However, his decision-making abilities will definitely be called into question over all of this. The fact that he randomly accepted drugs from someone and then left them in his boarding school room will be questioned. So that is where he will have to come up with further ideas on how to deal with this situation.</p>
<p>Well it’s a boarding school, so it’s in his personal abode. You think Duke is going to hold the boarding school kid to a standard that kids who live at home could never be subjected to?</p>
<p>I don’t think the facts of this event come close to warranting rescission.</p>
<p>Now if he got caught cheating, he’d be toast!</p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad I have no idea if this warrants rescission. However, he came here for help so we are discussing this to the best of our knowledge. I don’t have an opinion either way at this point on whether or not he should be rescinded. I’m merely trying to offer any suggestions I can.</p>
<p>However, on your point about the boarding schools, I’d assume that the fact that it was in his dorm room won’t matter. Just like most colleges have the right to search and seizure in college dorms because it is college property (I remember a thread on this last year in which a kid’s college dorm was searched and something was found… don’t remember what was found or what happened, however as for legality, it seemed to be established on the thread that it was within the rights of the school). When going to a boarding school, I’d assume the kids know the rules beforehand, so they can most certainly be held to those rules.</p>
<p>And thus, he got suspended. That’s enough punishment.</p>
<p>He got caught with some pot. Do you think that taking the time and effort to get a drug test is going to convince anyone that he doesn’t smoke it? I’d be laughing for days. </p>
<p>The right thing to do is own up and take responsibility, bear the punishment, forget about it and move on. The same is true for speeding tickets.</p>
<p>@ClassicRockerDad Without all of the details, I have no idea of what would be an appropriate punishment here. Perhaps the suspension is too harsh, perhaps it is too lenient. I have no idea :/</p>
<p>However, as I said before, all I can offer is insight and suggestions. The rest is between him, his school, and Duke to work out and decide.</p>
<p>“searched my room, FOR SOME REASON . . .”</p>
<p>“got caught up in this . . .”</p>
<p>“a careless instant”</p>
<p>“I didn’t even smoke it . . .”</p>
<p>Dude - you sound like a victim. If you want you can write an explanation about how all these other people did this to you . . . or you could man up. You wouldn’t be the first toker to go to Duke.</p>