Campus News Briefs – Spring 2014

Marijuana Use Nipped in the Bud

Despite the onslaught of state-licensed “pot shops” opening in Colorado early this year for legal recreational consumption, marijuana use is prohibited on campus in compliance with federal law. The state was the first to legalize the purchase and use of marijuana — to be consumed only on private property — for adults 21 and older, but anyone caught on campus with the drug will face sanctions and penalties under the CU-Boulder Student Code of Conduct.

“The passage of Amendment 64 had zero impact on marijuana laws for those under the age of 21,” says CU-Boulder campus spokesman Ryan Huff. “And per the state law, anyone smoking marijuana in public still faces a criminal summons.”

First Female Police Chief and Professor of Year Celebrated

From overseeing anti-gang operations to managing a security team for the Academy Awards, Melissa Zak, the new campus police chief, spent 20 years working for the Los Angeles Police Department. Hired to the CU post in December 2013, she is the first female police chief since the department was founded in 1949.

Across campus a passion for teaching led physics professor Steven Pollack to receive the 2013 U.S. Professor of the Year award. He has taught at CU since 1993 and was chosen from more than 350 applicants in the category of doctoral and research universities.

More Memory, Less Google

Using Google may be making us more forgetful, according to research done by CU-Boulder senior research associate Adrian Ward and Harvard University professor Daniel Wegner, who passed away last July. Of more than 500 participants in the study, those who were told to actively remember facts given via computer were more likely to recall them if they thought the information would be immediately erased. Those who believed the information was stored and could be recalled later were more likely to forget the information.

Further research suggests that participants who used a search engine when answering trivia questions also had a higher opinion of their own intelligence than those who didn’t use a search engine.

Photography by Patrick Campbell