University of Maryland SSDP

From SSDPedia

Located in College Park, MD. The University of Maryland SSDP chapter won Outstanding Chapter Award in 2004 and 2006 and is currently lead by Stacia Cosner.

Their website is a living history of all of the efforts put forth by this dedicated chapter. It was originally created by and is still hosted by SSDP's webmaster Morgan Lesko. Morgan is an alumnus of this chapter.

1 Origins
2 History & Accomplishments
3 Awards
- 3.1 Member/Alumni Awards
4 External Links

[edit] Origins

Just after midnight, October 1st, 2001, Morgan Lesko and a friend were arrested for a joint behind the Campus Recreation Center. Not able to find a NORML chapter on our campus, he decided to start one up (again). According to his early mentor, Chris Evans, there was some form of drug policy reform organization a few years earlier, which had dissipated. The first meeting called was under the name 'TORML', Terrapins for the Reform of Maryland Laws, but an attendee at the first meeting convinced us not to limit ourselves to fighting marijuana laws, since our policies towards the harder drugs are also failing and creating far more harm than good.

With that, Morgan founded the Maryland chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy in the fall of 2001. Even though they did a petition geared towards changing the dorm policies, most of their early efforts were all about educating the campus both on the harms of the drug war and on harm reduction. After the first year or so, Martin Baer and others took over leadership of the organization. However, by the spring of 2003, the chapter was thinning with little progress, graduating active members, and a loud liberal reaction to the appalling war abroad.

After two years dedicated to the campus chapter, Morgan began interning and volunteering for David Borden with the Drug Reform Coordination Network (www.stopthedrugwar.org) working primarily on the Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform under Jon Rosen. DRCNet shares an office suite with the SSDP National Staff and Flex Your Rights (www.flexyourrights.org). During the summer of 2004, SSDP's executive director, Scarlett Swerdlow, asked if the University of Maryland chapter would be willing to host of annual national conference on the campus. Despite a nearly extinct chapter with only about five members, they decided to host the conference. Though they could not convince that many Maryland students to join them for the conference, people definitely noticed when the drug policy reform movement came to town.

Since then, the University of Maryland SSDP chapter has been steadily growing, largely due to increased popularity among the incoming freshmen in 2005 and 2006. After they hosted the national conference in November of 2004, they maintained a heavy campus presence and felt a distinct difference in the incoming classes during their orientation tours. Since they were around campus so much, they ended up interacting with countless tour groups of perspective students' families. They met so many incoming students who were very excited to see them on campus, and even parent would typically receive them very well.

In 2004-2005, lead by Damien Nichols and then Anastacia Cosner, SSDP did a second dorm rights petition that we ended up not really using. But after collecting a couple thousand signatures for that petition, they had gained enough support that the Marijuana-Alcohol Equalization Referendum on the SGA ballot passed by a student vote by 65%! From then on, there was a new strong SSDP in town...