NIPPING 4/20 IN THE BUD
Searching hard for a way to seem even more ridiculous than it did in 2012 when it poured fish guts on Norlin Quad to prevent revelers from participating in a 4/20 celebration, the University of Colorado Boulder announced this week that it will be closing the campus again for this year’s 4/20. On a date they’re not really open in the first place: Easter Sunday. Ouch. Can you feel the chemical burn, stoners? “It [campus] will be open to students, faculty and staff on Sunday, April 20, but for the third straight year will be closed to unauthorized non-affiliates,” said a CU press release.
And since it’s not even physically possible in this universe that a college student or an art professor or a janitor with a bad hip might smoke pot, that disallowing of non-affiliates ought to nip the whole thing in the bud right there.
The closure to non-affiliates will be campuswide from noon to 6 p.m., and the quad will be closed to everyone for the whole day so that university officials can water the lawn into mud, and then put sticks in it while audibly grumbling about the music kids listen to these days. They might even shout, “neiner-neiner poo-poo” at non-existent crowds just for good measure.
Hopefully, the glassy-eyed masses will take this opportunity to stage an adult Easter Weed Hunt at Chautauqua Park.
In case you were wondering, the reason given for the closure is that it causes serious disruptions to “research, teaching and learning.” That argument was specious enough last year when 4/20 landed on a Saturday. But since even less of that stuff is happening on a Sunday — like, none — it begs the question: CU, are you high?
NEO-CON WANTED
In what might not be unrelated news, CU is looking to fill its Token Right- Winger Chair. Oh, sorry. Its formal name is Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy.
Apparently the last person who held this position, which was rolled out a couple of years ago as a symbolic effort to create the illusion that the political makeup of the CU faculty is balanced, was tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail by liberals who ran amok.
But seriously, any time we mention this position, known in some circles as the Hank Brown/Bruce Benson Memorial Chair, we like to repeat what conservative journalist George Will said at the time it was created: “Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, they’re planning to study conservatives. That’s hilarious.”
JAIL TIME FOR MINOR OFFENSES
Not content to simply spy on them with video cameras, make efforts to banish them with Shakespeare and boot them out of the public spaces they huddle in to hide from the winter weather, the Boulder City Council moved forward with its plans to flip yet another bird at the homeless this week when it considered making it a crime under city code to violate municipal rules, meaning infractions as small as smoking on the municipal campus or littering could be punished with jail time.
“These are mostly not controversial,” City Attorney Tom Carr told the Daily Camera.
The shift reverses a decision made in 2012, and is part of the efforts to “clean up” downtown Boulder, just like how Mussolini cleaned up Italy and Franco cleaned up Spain.
And it’s true. Some families have complained that they can’t go to Central Park because of the homeless. But reading their complaints in local media about how they can’t use a park — not because it’s closed, but because those people are there — we’re reminded of a piece of advice from Dear Abby, when a reader asked how to restore the quality of a neighborhood after a gay couple moved in: “You could move,” she said.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
