By Suzanne Zionts
Julia Diaco, the 18-year-old New York University student accused of selling marijuana, cocaine and psychedelic drugs out of her dorm room on Washington Sq. W., was arraigned in New York State Supreme Court on Wed., April 28, after being arrested allegedly selling drugs to an undercover police officer the previous day. Her family posted her $10,000 bail.
Diaco gave a not-guilty plea for the criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree. Justice Brenda Soloff set her trial date for May 20. According to the Manhattan district attorney, Diaco was on St. Mark’s Pl. on her way to a drug transaction with an undercover police officer when she was busted. According to the statement, Diaco had sold drugs to the undercover officer six times in the past six months, and this time was found with several ounces of marijuana and a scale in her possession.
Although Diaco mainly dealt from her room, she also reportedly sold drugs on W. Fourth St. and Sixth Ave., about a block from St. Joseph’s School, an elementary school.
N.Y.U. students are handling the latest media frenzy on campus calmly and without much ado. However, some are concerned that the news media seem to have singled out Hayden Hall, where Diaco lived, as the only place on campus where drugs are being abused. Located on Washington Sq. W., Hayden Hall houses 674 students, mostly freshmen.
“I wasn’t surprised about the drug bust,” said freshman Amanda Farnecker, 19. “I have never been around a whole drug party or anything at N.Y.U., but I know that they are not just at Hayden. I think a reason it might be prevalent at our college is because there is not a unified feeling at our university.”
Farnecker said that the drug bust did not give her a bad impression of N.Y.U. She said there’s been a lot of drama this year already with the suicides and the “Bobst Boy,” the student who slept in Bobst Library for the past eight months. The media has been giving N.Y.U. a lot of attention.
“I don’t feel totally surrounded by drugs living in Hayden,” said Kaite Kiefer, 19, another freshman living in the dorm on Washington Sq. “There’s a bigger buzz when Mary-Kate and Ashley visit their friends in Hayden than there is about coke in our dorm.”
Kiefer said that Mary-Kate and Ashley — as in, the celebrity Olsen twins, who enrolled at N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study last December — do “party” at the dorm all the time, but that she didn’t know of their being mixed up in any drugs.
(The Olsen twins may party on campus but they don’t live there. Last year they purchased a $3.5 million apartment in the new Morton Square building in the Far West Village.)
“Julia Diaco never came to class,” said Josie Rosenberg, 19, another freshman. “She came once every couple of weeks. [It seemed] she was a student on the side.”
Jimmy Everett, a 21-year-old residential assistant, or R.A., at Hayden Hall said, “Drugs are everywhere in every dorm of this college. I’m sure the amounts vary. Students are better off not doing them, but if they are going to do it, be mature about it.”
Everett said that his floor at Hayden has not had any drug problems. He said he told his students that they can always come to him if they have a problem, but he doesn’t condone drug use.
“Diaco blaming her problems on her R.A. for not helping her is an excuse for what she was doing,” said Everett. “We’re not stupid. We’re friends and mentors to our students, but if they do not watch what they are doing, they are going to get in trouble.”
It seems there’s been lots of, if not trouble, then troubling incidents this year at N.Y.U., for some reason.
Said Caitlin Rosengartan, 19, an N.Y.U. freshman, “I have nothing to compare N.Y.U. with, but all the chaos this year makes me wonder what’s up with our college.”
John Beckman, the university’s spokesperson, said all colleges, to some degree, face the problem of student drug use.
“We’ve done a survey among our students,” Beckman said. “Drug use among our students is mostly on par or slightly above the national average. The issue of drug use by college students is an issue that institutions of higher learning confront on a daily basis. It’s important to distinguish between the wave of news coverage and what’s really going on.”
Beckman said that substance abuse, whether it is drugs or alcohol, remains a great threat to college students. N.Y.U. has an Office of Drug and Alcohol Education that tries to move students away from substance abuse. Last year, N.Y.U. instituted a peer educational program in residence halls.
But others think drugs do flow more freely at N.Y.U. than other colleges.
“If they are drug dealing at N.Y.U. within an N.Y.U. dorm, I do not think they should have to leave their dorms to make money, especially at N.Y.U.,” said John Smulligan, 21, a junior.
Smulligan said it’s not that the school is naïve about the problem. Rather, he said, it’s that N.Y.U. is powerless to prevent students from abusing drugs behind closed doors. Smulligan said students can get any drug delivered to their door: coke, heroin or psychedelics. He said someone even offered him a business card for a delivery service when he was a freshman.
“Once we’re in [to college], we’re in,” Smulligan continued. “Most N.Y.U. students didn’t experiment with drugs in high school because they had to get their grades to get into a school. Now, as long as they don’t get caught, some students figure, what do they have to lose?”
