<p>Interresteddad:</p>
<p>I guess I find it difficult to keep myself from stopping by this board now and then (even though my son has decided to go elsewhere), just to see what folks are saying. Hope I don’t seem like an interloper.</p>
<p>In arguing that drug use at Swarthmore is not widespread, you write:</p>
<p>"This view seems to be supported by the federal campus crime stats. For the most recent three-year period from 2001-2003:</p>
<p>Swarthmore had 3 drug law arrests and 7 drug law disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Grinnell had 1 arrest and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Amherst had 8 arrests and 27 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Williams had 29 arrests and 78 disciplinary actions.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is more than twice the size, so factor that into the numbers. It had 41 drug law arrests and 68 disciplinary actions."</p>
<p>Well, drug use may or may not be widespread at Swarthmore, but, as I suspect you already know (as reflected by your use of the word “seems”), stats of this sort are pretty meaningless in trying to assess, with any degree of accuracy, the amount of drug use on a campus. Why? Because in order to infer the overall amount of drug use simply from the number of related arrests and disciplinary actions, one would have to make a number of assumptions - each of which is suspect - including the following:</p>
<p>–that the degree of law-enforcement and disciplinary attention devoted to student drug use is consistent at each place.</p>
<p>–that the openness of the drug use is consistent at each place (meaning, here, that the use would as readily catch the attention of law-enforcement and disciplinary personnel).</p>
<p>One could easily imagine, for example, a school with the lowest overall amount of drug use having the highest number of arrests and disciplinary actions, simply because of the intensity of the law-enforcement and disciplinary activity. Conversely, one could imagine a school with the highest amount of use having the lowest number of arrests and disciplinary actions, because comparatively little enforcement attention was paid. Without knowing a lot more than these statistics reveal, I think that it’s simply impossible to draw any sort of reasonable conclusion from them concerning the amount of overall use, or even to regard them as any sort of meaningful corroboration. </p>
<p>If I’m wrong here, I’m sure you’ll tell me why (which, I hasten to add, I say with admiration).</p>