Bard tops Cannabis College list

Bard tops Cannabis College list - celebstoner
New York’s Bard College leapfrogged past Warren Wilson College to become the No. 1 so-called “Reefer Madness” school in the Princeton Review’s 2008 rankings.Last year Bard was second to Wilson, but the college immortailized by Steely Dan in “My Old School” can now claim the “widest use of marijuana” among its student body. The University of Colorado at Boulder climbed 12 slots to No. 3. The University of Vermont at Burlington and New College of Florida round out the Top 5.

A small school of 1,600 undergrads, Bard is located in the Hudson Valley, near Kingston, Saugerites and the Catskill Mountains – approximately 90 minutes from Manhattan. Among the alumni are Chevy Chase, Blythe Danner, Larry Hagman, Todd Haynes, Herb Ritts, Matt Taibbi and Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who met there in 1967.

In fact, Becker was busted at Bard for marijuana. “I was briefly imprisoned,” he recalls. “Every once in a while, about once a year in those days, they would bust 40 to 50 Bard College students. I spent a night in jail. It was the county jail. They arraigned us in Red Hook. I was not a student at the time. I just happened to be there playing a gig with somebody who was a student, sleeping at this guy’s house when the traditional sweep took place.”

Steely Dan refer to Bard, which is based in Annadale-on-Hudson, and the bust in “My Old School”:

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I remember the thirty five sweet goodbyes
When you put me on the Wolverine up to Annandale
It was still September when your daddy was quite surprised
To find you with the working girls in the county jail

I was smokin’ with the boys upstairs
When I heard about the whole affair…

Here’s the list of “Reefer Madness” colleges:

(last year’s ranking in parenthesis)

1. Bard College, NY (2)
2. Warren Wilson College, NC (1)
3. University of Colorado, Boulder (15)
4. University of Vermont, Burlington (3)
5. New College of Florida (8)
6. University of California, Santa Cruz (4)
7. Colorado College (new)
8. Hampshire College, MA (7)
9. Eugene Lang College, NY (new)
10. Sarah Lawrence College, NY (10)
11. Ithaca College, NY (16)
12. Pitzer College, CA (6)
13. Skidmore College, NY (14)
14. University of Oregon, Eugene (new)
15. Wesleyan University, CT (12)
16. Guiford College, NC (13)
17. University of West Virginia, Morgantown (11)
18. University of California, Santa Barbara (17)
19. Eckerd College, FL (18)
20. University of New Hampshire, Durham (new)

Off the list: Lewis & Clark College, OR (5); University of Texas, Austin (9); Vassar College, NY (19); and Oberlin College, OH (20)

I’m sorry, but any cannabis college list that doesn’t include Portland’s Reed College is highly suspect to me.  Reed is known for being very tolerant of drug culture, and that’s tolerant in comparison to Portland, a.k.a. “Potland, Oregon”.  C’mon, Reedies, you can’t let a bunch of UofO Ducks win the weed award for Oregon!