Kaiti Jolly's Interviews

Interview #1: Kelly Hogan
CU Graduate (Business Major)

• What do you think about CU threatening to step up enforcement this year and ticket people going to or leaving the quad?
• In your opinion, is 4/20 a “political/social statement” or is it just a free ticket to smoke in public with little chance of getting in trouble?
• Do you know the origins of the term “4/20”?
• Do you think the events that take place on 4/20 “devalue your degree or the reputation of CU”?
• Your plans for 4/20?
• What do you think about CU’s current penalties for being caught with marijuana (misdemeanor—the same as a minor being caught with alcohol)?

Interview #2: Alonso Nieto
CU Freshman (Business Major)

• What do you think about CU threatening to step up enforcement this year and ticket people going to or leaving the quad?I don’t like that. It won’t stop people, so I don’t see the point in it—there’s like 35,000 kids on campus, so I don’t think it will do much for preventing 4/20.
  
• In your opinion, is 4/20 a “political/social statement” or is it just a free ticket to smoke in public with little chance of getting in trouble? Just a free ticket to smoke in public with little chance of getting in trouble…I think the majority are just going out there to smoke, but some are actually looking at the bigger picture and looking at the political statement. Most people probably aren’t thinking about the bigger picture, they’re just thinking hey look, it’s 420, let’s get high…I’d say about 70% just do it to get high.
• Do you know the origins of the term “4/20”? No.
• Do you think the events that take place on 4/20 “devalue your degree or the reputation of CU”? No, because it’s only one day out of the whole year and it doesn’t have anything to do with the education we’re getting—maybe the kids participate in it, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the institution giving out our degree.
• Your plans for 4/20? I don’t know yet. I have to work and go to classes, I wanna go to the quad, I don’t know if I wanna participate in the “activities” or not.
• What do you think about CU’s current penalties for being caught with marijuana (misdemeanor—the same as a minor being caught with alcohol)? I think there should be more punishment since it’s an illegal drug. Alcohol is legal if you’re over the age of 21, but marijuana is never legal unless you have a card.

Both of my sources were CU students. Kelly Hogan will be graduating this May and has attended three other 4/20 gatherings at the University of Colorado. Alonso Nieto is a Freshman this year in the Business School; if he chose to to attend this year's 4/20, it would be his first. I chose these sources because of their age gap as well as their differing experiences with 4/20 at CU. My sources also seemed to have different opinions regarding 4/20 and its history at the University.
My methods for interviewing were both a little different; the interview with Kelly was done over Skype and the audio was recorded, and the interview with Alonso was very basic and I just wrote down his answers.
I thought the interviews went very well, both had very interesting opinions, particularly on the question regarding the value of their degree and the reputation of the University in regards to 4/20.
If I had the interview to do over again, I might just write Kelly's down as well instead of using the multimedia, because uploading the audio turned out to be a real problem, but besides that, I enjoyed both of the interviews and their turn outs.