As a philosophy professor at CU-Boulder, normally I am content to debate ethical issues in the context of the classroom, presenting the competing arguments to my students without taking a stand myself. But sometimes it’s best to speak out, and with regard to CU’s misguided attempt to stop the 4/20 gathering, this is one of those times. I have tried and failed to stop the crackdown via internal channels, so I’m going public with my reasoning.

The students participating in the 4/20 event are engaging in a grassroots non-violent act of civil disobedience to protest an immoral law. Laws against recreational marijuana use are immoral, because people who use marijuana aren’t harming themselves, or others. Marijuana use is at least as safe as alcohol use. It’s not the users but the government which is causing most of the harm, by unfairly punishing users. There are problems associated with drug trafficking, but those problems only arise because marijuana is illegal.

Moreover, there is a long and admirable tradition of non-violent civil disobedience at college campuses in this country, from the protests in favor of civil rights laws to the protests against the Vietnam War. The 4/20 event should be seen in this vein.

Perhaps the 4/20 event is not very effective in implementing political goals. To the extent that’s the case, the solution is for us at CU to teach our students how to be more efficacious in their political activism. Note that teaching political activism isn’t just a liberal thing to do: one can be a political activist against gay marriage, or for banning abortion. Moreover, legalizing marijuana is not a liberal vs. conservative issue: conservatives as diverse as William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Pat Robertson have spoken out in favor of marijuana legalization.

What about safety issues? Is it somehow unsafe to have a gathering of 10,000 people? I’ve been to the 4/20 event multiple times (just to observe; I don’t use marijuana), and it’s always stuck me as a calm, peaceable event. In fact, I’ve been surprised by how mellow it is (though I guess I shouldn’t have been, for obvious reasons). The safety issue I’m concerned about is when the police start widely issuing citations to try to break up the event. I expressed my concern to Jeff Lipton, the administrator who heads the committee to end the 4/20 event, and he told me that the police will only use force if they “feel threatened.”

Of course, we saw what happened in the recent UC-Davis student protests: the police used pepper-spray on students, because the police said that they felt threatened, but it’s clear that their feeling was unreasonable. Lipton told me that he will ensure that police (both CU police and the police from other agencies who will be brought in) will be told not to engage in heavy-handed policing. We’ll see. The 4/20 event is safe; it’s CU’s misguided reaction to the event that makes me worried about safety.

A key reason that student government leaders gave for voting to push the 4/20 event off campus is that the event devalues a CU degree, because potential hirers might associate CU students with the degenerate event. Well, in an October 2011 Gallup poll, 50 percent of respondents said marijuana use should be legalized, with only 46 percent saying that it should remain illegal. Instead of trying to squelch the 4/20 event, CU could encourage students to spread the message that the point of the event isn’t just revelry, but also to commit a non-violent act of civil disobedience against a law that most people think should be overturned.

What about the cost to the university, of $50,000 per year in extra staff and security? Well, part of this money is spent because the university is trying to squelch the event. Part of this money is being spent because the university is overreacting — I’ve seen way more police at the 4/20 event than I have at other gatherings of over 10,000 people. And part of this money is being spent as the price we should happily pay for living in a free society, where people have the right to peaceably assemble, and where large-scale non-violent civil disobedience is a legitimate method of protesting against immoral laws. At least, large-scale non-violent civil disobedience should be recognized as a legitimate method of protest. It’s disappointing to me that CU, by its actions, is complicit in enforcing the immoral status quo of our nation’s oppressive marijuana laws.

Bradley Monton is an associate professor with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder.