SSDP Tip of the Week: Get Visible on Campus!

Use posters, events, and media to
magnify your chapter's visibility on campus!

We're starting a new series of blog posts aimed at helping you run successful chapters that engage in campaigns, constantly recruit new members, and become the most active and exciting groups on campus. To start things off, here's a lesson on visibility. 

It might seem like a no-brainer, but if you're not promoting your chapter's meetings, events or campaigns, then how will people know to join SSDP? Check out these great and easy ways to make sure people know about SSDP at your school. 

• Posters: Make sure you're putting up flyers every week to promote your chapter's meetings. This simple action is likely to not only increase attendance at your meetings, but it will make sure people are at least familiar with SSDP. If you have members that are talented graphic designers, put them to work! When the posters are printed, make putting them up around campus a fun team effort. 
• Events: Events, small or large, prove to your campus community that SSDP is active and working hard. It doesn't matter if it's a simple movie screening or a day long symposium on the injustice of the drug war, if you're constantly providing the community with opportunities to learn about drug policy, you'll bring credibility to your chapter and awareness to our mission. Events keep your chapter members interested and engaged. In addition to all this, if your chapter is consistently active, it will be hard for anyone on campus to try and stereotype SSDP members (we know the opposition tends to rely on name calling because the facts are on our side!). 
• Events are also great for highlighting campaigns you might be working on and really help to draw in new members that might not otherwise attend a general meeting. For instance, if you're just starting a chapter, consider holding a Know Your Rights movie screening and Q&A before your first meeting. That event is likely to draw in a much more diverse and possibly larger audience than the meeting would, providing you with the perfect opportunity to pitch SSDP and promote your upcoming general meeting!
• Campus Radio and TV: Reach out to shows on your campus radio or television stations and offer to give an interview about SSDP or a relevant drug policy issue. For example, if a medical marijuana bill was recently voted on in your state, that's a great opportunity for you to lend your expertise on the bill. Be proactive - don't wait for them to contact you. Once you're on the show, they're likely to call you back when similar stories arise. 
• Letters to the Editor: Probably one of the easiest ways to increase your chapter's visibility is to frequently submit letters to the editor to your campus paper and local media outlets. As a recognized student group, there is a high probability your piece will be published. Plus, LTE's are generally around 150 words so you can write one in about 10 minutes! 
• Build Coalitions: Research other groups on your campus and reach out to them by offering to combine efforts and work together. Groups working on issues like human rights, criminal justice, personal liberty, the environment, economics and racial injustice all tie into aspects of the drug war. Attend their meetings and see what you can do to help them - not only what they can do to help SSDP. 

I hope you've found this helpful. Each of the items listed here will be expanded on in upcoming "Tips of the Week" so subscribe to the SSDP Blog RSS feed and be sure to read through the SSDP Student Organizing Manual (soon to revised and updated!). 

Chapter Leader of the Week: Angela Shen, UCSD

Name: Angela Shen
Chapter: University of California, San Diego
Position: President

What was your experience working on the Prop 19 campaign like?  

Working on the Prop 19 campaign was definitely an interesting experience. Prior to this quarter, our SSDP chapter was just a humble gathering of a few like-minded individuals. We saw Prop 19 as a chance to really expand our organization and get our name out there, so we poured pretty much all of our free time into making this possible. Weekly meetings and events, tabling on campus every day - running a campaign is exhausting! But at the same time, it was definitely fun. 

We held a bake sale to raise money, got some amazing speakers to come through, and Dr. Bronner's Firetruck came to our campus twice. How can anything that involves talking about marijuana legalization and handing out stickers that say "Yes We Cannabis" not be fun? In the end, we did get our name out there and created some great relationships with other student organizations like Young Americans for Liberty, who brought famous LEAP speaker Judge Jim Gray to our school and graciously put our organization as a co-sponsor. 

Even though the Prop didn't pass, I feel optimistic for 2012. 3.4 million people voted for it - if we all convinced just one other person to vote for legalization in 2012, we'll win in a landslide!

What issues are important for your chapter? 

Real drug education and harm reduction are issues that our chapter is interested in addressing in the future.

Do you have any events planned for the this semester? 

We have a radio show at the on campus station called "Higher Education with SSDP."  Weekly installments where we focus on the effects of different drugs (and play appropriate music) is an idea that we've been tossing around and will probably implement next quarter. 

Collaborations with other student organizations are definitely going to happen as well. 

What do you like best about being part of SSDP? 

The fact that any student can start a chapter and make real, tangible changes about drug policy - something that so urgently needs to be addressed - is so empowering! Also, I've met awesome people through this organization. SSDP seriously attracts the coolest people on campus - some of my best friends are people I met through this organization! 

No, really though. I don't care if I'm being cheesy - I heart SSDP!

Do you have any advice for other chapter leaders?

Utilize your campus' resources! If you are a registered student organization, you have power! Reach out to the press, other student organizations, and professors. Don't forget to follow up with people that you talk to. That's something that I need to work on. 

Oh and plan ahead! One thing that I wish I had done for the campaign was register more voters - I realized too late that I should have organized voter registration drives at freshman orientations and move-ins over the summer. 

And finally, delegate duties fairly and wisely - utilize everybody who said they'd help!

Don't Trust Dragonflies

When it comes to California's Prop. 19, I've found there are roughly 3 types of people opposed to the initiative.

• Some politicians or law enforcement types who think it is in their best interest to oppose cannabis reform. 
• People who have not read the initiative and have been relying only on hearsay and urban legends (or who misunderstand the language in the initiative). 
• Those with investments in the medical marijuana industry who are more concerned about losing money if the price of cannabis goes down or if CA residents no longer have to pay MediCann $200 to get a doctor's note saying it's ok for them to use medical marijuana.

Below are parts of a post from Opposing Views that includes a debate going on between Chris Conrad, NORML and Dragonfly de la Luz. Dragonfly is the author of a blog called "Stoners Against Prop 19" in which she states mountains of misinformation and lies that were quickly and easily refuted by Chris Conrad and Russ Belville at NORML.

Dragonfly: Nowhere in my article do I claim that marijuana is more legal when it’s decriminalized. I said it is more legal now because it IS legal now. Marijuana has been legal in California since 1996.

NORML: Really, I’ll have to mention that to the 78,514 Californians arrested in 2008 for marijuana offenses.  In fact, marijuana IS NOT legal in California and since 1996 a handful of Californians have only been exempted from criminal prosecution under Prop 215 (except, of course, Eugene Davidovich, Donna Lambert, James Stacy, Jovan Jackson, Felix Kha, and a whole bunch of other people who thought they were legal under Prop 215 yet still ended up in a courtroom and behind bars for a time).
Specifically in Prop 215:

…patients and their primary caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.

Which means that criminal prosecutions and sanctions for marijuana still exist.  Shorter: it ain’t legal.

You really have to read the whole thing to believe this nonsense. She even goes so far as to speak on behalf of Jack Herer, a man who died months ago. We're assuming she hasn't seen the statement that the Herer family released calling on people like Dragonfly to stop using Jack Herer's name to spread lies about Prop 19.

Unfortunately, Jack passed away before Prop 19 made the 2010 ballot; so many people think he would still oppose it. We don’t believe that, and we ask that everyone stop saying he would cling to that position as we move toward the Nov. 2 vote.

As his family, we want the world to know that the last thing Jack Herer would want is for Californians to vote to keep Cannabis illegal. He was smart and had the political savvy to know that once a measure is on the ballot, the time for bickering has passed. That is why he campaigned for Prop 215 despite its shortcomings. That is why, were he able, he would now be telling voters to rally around and Vote Yes on Prop 19.

Dragonfly calls herself a marijuana activist because she "travel(s) the world, find(s) the best ganja, smoke(s) it, and write(s) about it for pot magazines."

I'm sorry Dragonfly, that's not called activism, that's called partying. And while you're busy partying, nearly 900,000 people are being arrested for marijuana charges every year in this country and about 10% of those arrests are coming from California.

Step aside and let the real activists do our work.

New Student Organizing Manual!

SSDP's outreach staff has revamped our student organizing manual to provide you with an in-depth guide to everything you need to know about running an SSDP chapter. This new manual features guides on lobbying, working with the media, running productive meetings, organizing successful events and much more.

Sections on recruiting and retaining members have been expanded on and we've added an appendix full of sample materials like a press release, flyer, budget and even a chapter curriculum to give new chapters an idea of what a semester with SSDP looks like.

Flip through the pages below and get fired up just in time for back to school!  

Open publication - Free publishing - More students

Top 20 Schools for Drug Policy Activism 2010

On newsstands this week, the October issue of High Times magazine features the Top 20 Institutions of Higher Education, their "annual list of schools and universities for students committed to marijuana activism". Compiled by SSDP staff members, this list reflects our chapters who have done outstanding work to reform marijuana and other drug policies at their schools during the 2009-2010 school year. Make sure to pick up a copy to read the full article with details on the amazing work these chapters did over the past year to earn this distinction.

1. Ithaca College Ithaca, NY
2. University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT
3. Kent State University Kent, OH
4. Northern Virginia Community College Woodbridge, VA
5. University of Iowa Iowa City, IA
6. Front Range Community College Boulder, CO
7. University of Maryland College Park, MD
8. University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR
9. West Virginia University Morgantown, WV
10. University of Connecticut Storrs, CT
11. University of Texas El Paso, TX
12. Northern Illinois University Dekalb, IL
13. Black Hills State University Spearfish, SD
14. Brown University Providence, RI
15. Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA
16. University of Miami Miami, FL
17. San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA
18. SUNY New Paltz New Paltz, NY
19. Reed College Portland, OR
20. Mills College Oakland, CA

Congratulations to all SSDP chapter members for your outstanding work advancing the student movement to end the war on drugs!

Stay tuned for updates from all of our 132 active chapters as they begin the 2010-2011 school year this month through our Action Alert list, Facebook Page & Cause, and Twitter.

Chapter members: check out this page to learn about how your chapter's work can be featured in High Times.