Inside the Wesleyan Molly Bust

In late May, at the start of Wesleyan’s graduation weekend—where Lin-Manuel Miranda, the 2002 alumnus and MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant recipient whose “Hamilton” is currently the toast of Broadway, gave the commencement address— federal prosecutors announced the indictment of Lonergan and Kramer on five counts of selling controlled substances. Jury selection for their trial is scheduled for November 3rd.

The university is back in session for a new academic year. Last month, freshmen students enjoyed gender-bending festivities, cross-cultural dancing and Italian ices. President Roth gave the first State of the School address. But as the arrested former students prepare for their day in court — and as colleges across the country struggle with controversies over sexual assault, racism, binge-drinking and drug use — a central question looms: When students at an educational institution that prizes experimentation want to experiment with risky behavior, how liberal can a liberal-arts college be?

Long before it was lampooned for an unflinching devotion to identity politics in the 1994 cult-classic “PCU” (‘Politically Correct University’), Wesleyan had a reputation for being progressive, if nothing short of radical. Founded in 1831, under the auspices of John Wesley’s Methodist movement, Wesleyan first admitted female students in 1872. It began recruiting students of color in the 1960s. In 1968, a campus chapter of the Black Panthers formed. The following year, African-American students at Wesleyan, supported by a group of Middletown residents, held a 4 a.m. demonstration to demand a special-interest house and cultural center on campus. The former John Wesley House became Malcolm X House.

Today, campus controversies ignite over students’ right to chalk profane statements or the number and placement of gender-neutral bathrooms. Last month, a sophomore named Bryan Stascavage, a 30-year-old two-tour veteran of the Iraq War, published an op-ed suggesting that the Black Lives Matter movement contributed to violence against police. In response, a group of Wesleyan students launched a petition to defund the campus newspaper for failing “to be an inclusive representation of the voices of the student body.” Gawker’s mocking blog post about the petition called the college “the dictionary representation of ‘Stereotypical Ultraliberal Private University.'”

Wesleyan’s liberal fervor only abets its reputation as a druggy college. The first Grateful Dead concert in Connecticut is said to be one played on Foss Hill in May 1970. The arrival of spring is marked with “Zonker Harris Day,” an annual celebration of psychedelic music and drugs named after the stoner in the “Doonesbury” comics. Members of the Eclectic Society, which hosted the February DJ party in its imposing Doric-columned building, cultivate a drug-induced, ur-hipster mindset, and for years held an annual Sex Party— a bacchanal with porn on the wall and a cage in the center — until it was shut down in 2009. (As a student and attendee myself, I never witnessed any penetration.) All of which is meant to uphold the campus refrain, delivered anew by each graduating class: “Keep Wesleyan Weird.”