Drugs on Campus

That comely coed dutifully jotting lecture notes in biology class? That long-haired beatnik with the droopy mustache sidling into a bull session at an off-campus bar? Beware. They may not be students at all but undercover agents --out to make a pinch. That, at least, was what students at Cornell and Fairleigh Dickinson universities discovered last week. To their considerable surprise, local police in both communities had planted spies on campus to get leads on the sale of illegal drugs.

In Ithaca, Detective Maximo Jiminez donned dirty trousers and bright shirts, frequented the Collegetown area fringing the Cornell campus to gain the confidence of students. His work led to the arrest of 23 people, including one student from Cornell and another from Ithaca College, for selling or possessing LSD and marijuana. A Long Island University student, Andrew Gluck, 22, was accused of being a major supplier of drugs in Ithaca. Some of the sales, police contend, were made in Willard Straight Hall, Cornell's student union.

At Fairleigh Dickinson, in Rutherford, N.J., the spy was Mrs. Linda Hobbie, an attractive 20-year-old girl enrolled in film arts, biology and oilpainting classes to keep an eye on a coed once arrested for a narcotics vio lation. Hired by county police, Mrs. Hobbie soon discovered that she liked the suspected pusher too well to report her, blew her cover by telling all to one of her profs.

Some professors at the two schools regarded the student spies as an outrageous violation of academic freedom. Campus authorities, as well as many students, saw it differently. Cornell Provost Dale R. Corson said that the school had always assisted police in drug investigations and would continue to do so. Fairleigh Dickinson's President Peter Sammartino declared that "no institution has the right not to cooperate with any law-enforcement agency." They have good reason to cooperate. Last week U.S. Narcotics Commissioner Henry L. Giordano reported that arrests for use of marijuana have doubled since 1965. One cause of the upswing is "increased traffic among college-age persons of middle or upper economic status."

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