Two university students and two Augusta residents were arrested after what seemed like an innocent prank turned into a criminal offense.

In the early morning hours of Friday, Feb. 24, the Department of Public Safety’s midnight shift patrol seemed fairly normal. Sgt. Mat Chrisman said while they were patrolling University Village, Officer Anthony Plyer came across students involved in a college prank.

“Apparently, someone was taking trashcans and filling them half-full of water,” said Jasper Cooke, director of Public Safety.  “The doors open to the inside of the apartment, so you lean the trashcan with the water in it on the door, knock on the door and when the people open the door, it dumps all the water on your floor.”

Chrisman described the prank as “kid stuff,” but a further investigation of the prank led to a less innocent situation.

“While (the) midnight shift was investigating the practical joke, I noticed two people who did not fit and appeared to be hiding something,” he said.

The people were David Crutchfield, Jr., 20, Augusta, Ga., and Justin Baker, 20Hephzibah, Ga., two nonstudents standing outside one of the Village apartments. Chrisman said in further questioning them, he suspected they had been smoking marijuana.

Based on his experience, Chrisman said he recognized Crutchfield’s and Baker’s body language and the smell of marijuana on them. When he began questioning them, he noticed a suspiciously shaped object in Crutchfield’s pants pocket and could tell it was one of three things: a gun, a knife, or a marijuana pipe.  It turned out to be the latter.

Cooke said Chrisman then searched Crutchfield.

“He patted him down for his safety and the safety of everybody else, to make sure it wasn’t a weapon and found that Crutchfield had a marijuana pipe in his pocket,” Cooke said.  “Poor guy. At that point, Mr. Crutchfield was placed under arrest and Mr. Baker decided he didn’t want him to go to jail by himself, so he told the officers that he had something illegal in his possession, too, and he pulled out the marijuana that went with the pipe that Mr. Crutchfield had.”

After Baker’s confession, Cooke said the two suspects told Chrisman they had just stepped outside one of the Village apartments. When Public Safety officers went into the room, they discovered more were involved than just Crutchfield and Baker.  Augusta State students Frema Awuku, pre-biology major, and Nicolas Nava, undeclared major, were added among the suspects. Awuku was found in possession of marijuana and Nava was found with Vyvanse pills, a prescription drug used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, with the intent of selling them.

All four individuals were criminally charged, Chrisman said. Crutchfield, Baker and Awuku were charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana while Nava was charged with felony of possession with intent to distribute a schedule II narcotic.

Cooke said Augusta State holds a zero-tolerance policy toward drug use on campus, which can include eviction from student housing as well as potential academic disciplinary action. According to the Public Safety website, from 2007 to 2010, there were 22 instances involving drug-related arrests on Augusta State property.  Cooke said, historically speaking, most of these instances occur during August and September among first-time freshmen away from home, who are experimenting with their new found freedom. Yet, to Cooke, the events at the Village serve as a reminder to students of the University’s standards.

“For housing, students that are found with any type of drugs or drug paraphernalia, the University policy is that they are evicted from housing,” he said. “As far as the academic part of it, we turn in a student incident report to the dean of students, and then they can plead their case to the dean of students based on whatever involvement they had. It’s up to that office whether they remain in school or they have any type of academic or institutional restrictions put on them.”

Joyce Jones, vice president for student services and dean of students, said while students are automatically evicted from the Village, the University might not automatically suspend them, but they can be referred to a judicial committee for prosecution.

“Lately, judges have been hard on drug-related cases, especially if they were criminal offences,” she said.

Jones said she does not have much sympathy for students who are caught selling drugs and they are much more likely to face suspension, but those incidents are rare.

Even without the threat of academic punishment, Jones said if a student is arrested for drug possession and unable to make bail, he or she can wind up staying in jail, making it very difficult to proceed academically.  But Jones said it would be wise to “curtail the practice” of smoking marijuana for more reasons than to just avoid criminal charges.

“From my standpoint, I think it would be very difficult for a student whose smoking marijuana everyday to be successful in school,” she said. “It tends to make people apathetic.”

In light of the recent incident at the Village, Jones said drug possession still remains to be a minimal problem at Augusta State.

“There are very few instances of drug possession on this campus and at University Village relative to the general population,” she said. “We’ve had many more minors in possession of alcohol than in possession of marijuana, in terms of the number of possessions.”