Herb being smoked in front of the Florida A&M University café was the last thing I expected on my way to buy a No. 2 with a coke from Pizza Hut.
The cloud of smoke coming from the mouths of people sitting around the eatery’s outer brick wall almost choked me.
As I passed by, the cloud of stupidity that circled their thinking processes almost made me re-analyze why I was at an institution of higher education.
As I sat in the café waiting on my brothers to get their food, questions filled my mind.
Is smoking allowed on campus? When was this established?
Is this in the FAMU student handbook, The Fang? Was I the only person out of the couple hundred people that passed this ignorance who smelled the illegality?
Or, am I the only one who cared that this was going on?
John Tucker, 20, a sophomore business administration student from Atlanta, had more trouble with the place students chose to smoke than the act.
“I don’t care if you smoke weed, but if you do it in an open area, you deserve to get caught,” he said.
I’m not the only person that is witnessing this illegal activity, so why is this going on?
Since the activity was in front of the café, I proceeded to the counter to get a response from a Sedexho food employee.
Tasha Cook said when students are smoking outside of her job it has little effect on her.
“I don’t go to school here, and it’s not affecting me,” she said. “If they get caught that’s their business.”
As I questioned Cook, another Sodexho employee heard our conversation and left his cooking station to go outside where I first saw the group of herb smokers.
I followed behind him slowly and watched him from inside. From the looks of it, he warned the group that someone was inside reporting on the illegal activity, and they needed to leave.
Before the Sodexho employee could get back to the entrance of the café door, the mob of people scattered in different directions as if they were leaving a crime scene.
Was this an eyewitness account of the Code of Silence? These people’s reactions were so unreal.
As I walked across the street, all I could think about was how scholarly students park illegally to get to class because of car troubles or a lack of paring spaces and get towed or booted, but students sit 15 feet away from Wahnish Way and smoke illegal drugs with no repercussion.
-This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Josh King is a senior magazine production student from Jacksonville. He can be reached at famuanopinions@hotmail.com.