In an effort to get more of the college’s less-motivated student population to get off their asses and perform service work throughout the greater Greensboro community, the Bonner Scholar program has created the new Adopt a Stoner Program. With the Adopt a Stoner Program, each individual Bonner seeks out two to three especially pervasive pot smokers and helps facilitate each stoner’s involvement in some sort of community service activity several times per week.

“We chose to target and involve stoners specifically because they tend to be especially lazy and some of the hardest kinds of slackers to motivate,” said junior peace and conflict studies major Alyzza Callahan. “Additionally, there’s no shortage of them on campus, so we knew that there would plenty of material to work with.”

Thus far the program has been quite successful.

Many stoners ended up opting to attend work trips over break instead of going home where they could conveniently wake and bake due to the absence of smoke detectors in their rooms.

Plenty of new normally red-eye folks have also been showing up to committed sites like Glenhaven each week.

“It’s really great at Glenhaven,” said program mentor and junior political science major Bobby Lee. “Students who would normally be making after-dinner gravity bongs are showing up and helping little kids do their homework during their free time instead.”

Dean of Students Aaron Fetrow offered the following hypothesis regarding the Adopt a Stoner Program’s success.

“I think the program’s success has a lot to do with the specificity of its approach with regards to the ethics of smoking weed,” Fetrow said. “The program doesn’t completely ridicule students’ smoking weed; they don’t say that there’s anything wrong with it; instead, they just encourage students to smoke less and work more.”

An adopted stoner of the program, senior Sam Sklover, elaborated on Fetrow’s philosophy.

“I like the program a lot because no one is telling me that I can’t or shouldn’t smoke,” Sklover said. “They just want to see me do more productive things with my free time, and I can get on board with that.”

The project coordinators at the Adopt a Stoner program also use current adoptees as recruiting tools. Current adoptees are encouraged by their coordinators to reach out to their other stoner friends and encourage them to smoke a little less and work in the community a little more, too.

“Right now I’m trying to get some of my stoner friends involved in doing more service,” Sklover said. “At first they were reluctant, but then I told them that we could just smoke a bowl after we got back from Project Home, and then they were totally down.”

Organizers have experimented with other methods of luring in new participants, including offering free snack trays and beverages.

“After an hour of hard work, it’s nice sit back and munch on some dank snacks,” said adopted stoner Silky Jenkins, adding “Yeah. Sweet.”

“I’m really proud of how the Adopt a Stoner program is transforming many students’ work ethics and commitments to service on this campus,” Fetrow said. “Work hard and do some service and then go smoke a blunt, that’s the spirit.”

For more information on how to get involved with the Adopt a Stoner Program, pick up a Cannabis Sativa Community Service Alliance (CSCSA) brochure in Founders Hall.