Downstroke

Cheaters are never beaters: Add this to your crib notes: Since last school year, student leaders at Chico State University have been devising an “honor code” of sorts; a policy that will define what constitutes academic integrity and how to make the campus stick to it.

At its first meeting of 2003-04, the Associated Students Governmental Affairs unanimously voted to set up a committee with a student majority that will recommend a policy against plagiarism and other nefarious scholarly deeds.

Thomas Whitcher, the A.S. Director of University Affairs, said the faculty senate and university officials are “very excited” about the plan. “We’re leading the way and the campus is recognizing us for it,” he said.

Police welcome back students: Ah, there’s nothing like tradition in college town. Whether it’s that home-opener on the gridiron, the clever yet harmless hijinx visited upon unsuspecting freshmen by the more seasoned upper classmen or the raw, alcohol-fueled, back-to-school debauchery practiced here in Chico.

This year, on the weekend before classes began, the Chico traditionalists were in fine form, earning 38 arrests, including four felonies, 17 drunk-in-public arrests, four resisting/fighting officers and one giving a false name to an officer. They also gathered 20 citations for minors in possession, 14 open container tickets and three peeing-in-public citations.

A large party at the Tau Chi frat on Chestnut included an arrest of a suspect who allegedly hurled a beer bottle at a frat bro’ and a second bottle thrown against and breaking the rear window of a police cruiser. From Friday through Sunday, police received more than 1,100 calls for service, many of which went unanswered because the cops were busy in the campus area breaking up parties and herding people off the streets and back onto the sidewalks.

Revelers fell short of last year, when there were 40 arrests, including nine felonies, nine DUIs, 15 drunk-in-public arrests, 17 for open-container and 27 minors in possession.

Cops give meds to feds: Dinah Coffman (pictured), Director of Butte Alliance for Medical Marijuana, has been trying for months to get back the medical marijuana that police took from her in a raid several months ago. Coffman, who grows and uses marijuana in accordance with county Prop. 215 guidelines, was never charged with any crime in that raid, so she figured the cops would be willing to give her medicine back. But after attempting to file a return of property order, she was shocked to find out that the police had turned her stash—and her name—over to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

“I thought the DEA wasn’t going to be involved in Butte County medical marijuana cases,” Coffman said. “I guess I was wrong.”

Coffman said she is fed up with the way law enforcement is treating medical pot patients. She said she has been harassed by police, victimized by plant thieves and visited by shady people who claim to be cops but aren’t. While the D.A.'s office encourages Prop. 215 patients to call police if they are robbed, Coffman said that more often than not, doing so just brings more trouble to the patient.

Medical marijuana seized in California raids that produced no arrests has been returned to patients in the past by other agencies, including the California Highway Patrol.