<p>I’m thinking that the “drug pimp” scenario was most likely not the case. First, the market for cannabis is by no means perfectly competitive: recreational buyers have imperfect information, usually having knowledge of only one or two people who deal. This means there’s very little competition for individual consumers, especially poorly connected, upper-middle-class college students who are nervous about the whole thing. They tend to buy loyally from whomever they know, since that’s the safest and most convenient route. Segregated markets = very little opportunity for “poaching.”</p>
<p>I also expect that if Campbell did deal cannabis, she didn’t deal a heck of a lot. It’s very time-consuming and logistically difficult – especially in a town like Cambridge where there probably aren’t any grow-ops – so I doubt she would have been able to maintain respectable grades while dealing a significant amount. And if she wasn’t dealing a significant amount, then there’s not much of a market to poach on.</p>
<p>The infusion of drugs into the story seems to have caused people to get a little carried away with their speculations. Like compmom said, the issue of drugs isn’t really relevant, except for the purpose of character assassination.</p>
<p>No, it is relevant, though perhaps not to Campbell’s particular role.<br>
It is relevant because Copney murdered Crosby, and, according to the police, it was over $1000 and one pound of marijuana. I have no idea what the worth of such an amount might be, but people have been killed for less. With this kind of leads, the police are bound to investigate further.
My experience is that, far from throwing its students to the wolves, Harvard does its best to protect them–hence some town/gown tensions. The Vorenbergs were by no means unique. This is not to say there is no racism at Harvard–I personally know two individuals who encountered racism there, one of them a member of the faculty and another a student. As well, the Ad Board acts in mysterious ways and has been the subject of a great deal of unhappiness. But I would be stunned if a student who was hauled in front of it had no knowledge of what the reasons were. Furthermore, from my limited knowledge, expulsions and suspensions are quite rare.
Right now, it appears that Campbell is “a person of interest.” Harvard has chosen not to allow her to march until her status is resolved. Maybe it should have allowed her to march. Who knows, however, how serious the police allegations are?</p>
<p>Very true. But that’s why I believe the issue of drugs per se isn’t relevant, since this crime could have transpired over virtually anything. This isn’t a type of scenario restricted to the cannabis-dealing scene, nor is it even characteristic of it. Focussing on the drug transaction inevitably brings up questions of class and culture that make the situation more complicated than it needs to be.</p>
<p>“Very true. But that’s why I believe the issue of drugs per se isn’t relevant, since this crime could have transpired over virtually anything. This isn’t a type of scenario restricted to the cannabis-dealing scene, nor is it even characteristic of it. Focussing on the drug transaction inevitably brings up questions of class and culture that make the situation more complicated than it needs to be.”</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s true. If there hadn’t been drug dealing going on, probably there wouldn’t have been a murder because it’s unlikely that the victim would have had a reason to be on campus .</p>
<p>“Right now, it appears that Campbell is “a person of interest.” Harvard has chosen not to allow her to march until her status is resolved. Maybe it should have allowed her to march. Who knows, however, how serious the police allegations are?”</p>
<p>She could have set him up to be robbed. That doesn’t mean that she intended for him to be killed. If he had just been robbed, he probably wouldn’t have gone to the police because the police would have wondered why a college drop-out without an apparent job would be carrying $1,000 in a Harvard dorm no less.</p>
<p>I noticed that Campbell was “not available” for an interview, according to this article. Has she actually answered questions from the press about this, or did she simply provide a statement complaining that she is being discriminated against because of her race? (Or has she stopped talking to the press now that some additional information has come out – or due to her lawyer’s advice?) I also wonder whether she has produced any documentation of her claim that Harvard gave her no reason for ordering her off campus and not allowing her to participate in the graduation ceremony. If Harvard’s policies say the student will be informed in writing of the reasons for actions like these, Campbell should certainly have SOMETHING in writing to show the press – even if it is a letter ordering her off campus with no reason attached to it.</p>
<p>Obviously Harvard, bound by confidentiality issues, is not talking. However, Campbell would be free to make any correspondance she received from Harvard available to the media if she wants to prove that the situation is as she has described it.</p>
<p>Does anyone know anything more about the other female Harvard student “involved” in this incident? As I understand it, she also is black and poor and from a crime-infested neighborhood, yet despite being the girlfriend of the man arrested for the murder, she is still on campus and eligible to participate in graduation ceremonies? Doesn’t that indicate there’s more to Campbell’s involvement than she is saying?</p>
<p>Of course, murder is not restricted to drug dealing. No one is saying it is. And drug dealing does not inevitably lead to murder. But to say the two are unrelated is to fly in the face of the evidence that has been provided by the police.</p>
<p>"I don’t know if students in affluent suburbs do MORE drugs than students in the inner city, in the aggregate, but I believe that drug use is more universal among students in affluent suburbs, where essentially no stigma attaches to drug use, than in the inner city, where it’s almost a good-vs.-evil proposition.
"</p>
<p>There has been research indicating that people in the affluent suburbs are more likely to use drugs; those in the inner city are more likely to sell drugs. One reason appears to be the lack of jobs in the inner city, and the lack of transportation to get to jobs that exist --which often are in far away suburbs. In addition, there’s the lack of education of inner city residents to obtain the jobs that exist.</p>
<p>“In any case, the anecdote does gives some insight into how at least one Harvard master saw his responsibility for protecting students from a police inquiry.”</p>
<p>There is a big difference between using legal means to prevent a student’s arrest for having a hookah and using illegal means (such as not revealing info to the police) to preventing or impeding a student’s arrest or investigation in connection with an armed robbery that resulted in a murder.</p>
<p>I could think of several, less stigmatic reasons that a sketchy Cambridge resident might be on campus: counterfeit cigarette-dealing is the first that comes to mind. There wouldn’t have been such a furore over that, since the black market for cigarettes isn’t stereotyped with violent crime.</p>
<p>For a moment, the thread degenerated into a discussion about drug-dealing riddled with morally loaded comments. The fact that drugs were the object of the illicit transaction which might have been the motive for the crime is irrelevant. That’s what I meant to impart.</p>
<p>I am angry about the idea that colleges like Harvard are obligated to provide even more services for students like Chanequa who came from very disadvantaged backgrounds. I think that Harvard and prep school already had provided wonderful opportunities for her. I also think that Harvard tries very hard to admit students who have the ability to adapt to Harvard’s surroundings, something that is a challenge for probably the majority of its students.</p>
<p>I went to Harvard with some students who had come from inner cities, including places like Harlem. I married a man (not a Harvard grad) who came from an extremely rough neighborhood in inner city Chicago, and was the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He went to a LAC and thrived. Similarly, a friend of mine from grad school, and gone from Harlem to Williams to a well regarded graduate program, where she was a star student. </p>
<p>It irks me that Chanequa Campbell is using the race card when it seems that for much of her life, she has gotten opportunities because she is poor and black (and also gifted). I find it very hard to imagine that Harvard would prevent her graduation for no reason except her race and socioeconomic background, and I am ticked off that her complaints about Harvard have made it into newspapers around the world. </p>
<p>I suspect that she was fortunate enough to be given some excellent opportunities that she blew.</p>
<p>Chanequa Campbell blew it! all by herself and now she’s grasping at straws. It’s pathetic and disgusting that after the opportunity that she had, she CHOSE to blow it and now has to blame someone other than herself.</p>
<p>Illegal is illegal any way you look at it. What is so hard to understand? I don’t care if it’s pot or hard drugs or anything else. Rules are rules and you follow them or you don’t and you run the risk of paying a price. IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING A CHOICE.</p>
<p>I think, to translate from kid to adult, that Mustafah is not arguing that the drug aspect is irrelevant, just that “drugs” are not morally worse than any other illegal activity – such as, say, robbing a bank, drag racing, or check kiting, or perhaps sunbathing nude in public. If someone had been shot dead in connection with a nude sunbathing ring, the situation would be exactly the same.</p>
<p>I think part of what’s going on here, with him and probably with many of the kids at Harvard, is a lot of willful self-deception. Kids like drugs, and don’t really want to associate them with their costs. A kid who recycles and composts religiously, and has abandoned meat and disposable plastic containers, does not want to deal with the fact that his herbs and powders of choice are financed, processed, imported, and distributed by business enterprises that are oppressive, exploitative, and violent.</p>