Fort Worth Police Capt. Ken Dean at a news conference regarding the arrest of TCU students on drug charges. Four TCU football players are among those arrested. (Associated Press)

Since the news broke that 19 arrests were made during a drug bust at TCU, many SMU students have been eager to point out that this is yet another example of our school’s superiority. They’re wrong. We’re no better.

While the trafficking operation police uncovered did involve distribution of ecstasy, narcotics and cocaine, most of the business was centered around marijuana.

If you are reading this article, the odds that you have smoked marijuana are about as high as the odds that you haven’t. Studies now suggest that roughly half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 have used marijuana at least once.

If you’ve used before, there’s a good chance you know somebody who sells. If you haven’t, well, you probably know somebody who has, and that person probably knows somebody who sells. The bottom line: to be a college student today is to be affected by marijuana in one way or another.

I’m not saying that we’re all a bunch of potheads, but the truth is that marijuana transcends every boundary that can be drawn between the SMU and TCU campuses. As a matter of fact, if either school has had more widespread problems with illegal drug usage, it is SMU.

According to The Dallas Morning News, between 2006 and 2010, SMU reported 127 drug arrests; TCU reported four. Although TCU averaged roughly 1,800 fewer students enrolled during those years, and was more likely to take disciplinary action without the aid of external law enforcement, SMU still averaged 16 pecent more drug incidents (arrests plus internal disciplines) per student per year than did TCU.

Now, admittedly, there’s a significant difference between smoking or being affected by marijuana and actually selling the stuff, and that’s what has us upset, right? We’re not bothered so much by the idea that college students have some recreational drug habits; it’s the knowledge that a school’s own football players, the supposed pride and joy of a Texas university, are the ones facilitating those habits.

But these kids who were arrested aren’t dangerous or exceptional. Nearly all of their deals were valued at less than $600 — hardly big-time.

To think that we don’t have the same sort of transactions taking place on our own campus is absurd. We do, and so does virtually every other university in the country. Maybe our football players aren’t involved — then again, maybe they are (an NCAA survey reports that 22.6 percent of student-athletes admitted to marijuana usage during 2011) — but who really cares?

If it isn’t the football players, it’s the student senators, or The Union, or APO, or the faculty, or the maintenance staff or a group of nobodies without any common affiliations — people use drugs at SMU; therefore, somebody sells drugs at SMU. It is naïve to think otherwise. Furthermore, even after the bust, somebody is still selling drugs at TCU.

This is not to belittle the efforts of law enforcement. Marijuana is illegal, and my intention is not to argue that it should be otherwise. If you smoke pot, if you sell it, then you are a criminal. That’s the way it is.

I would ask, though, that we be a little less quick to condemn our rivals for transgressions we undoubtedly share. We have the Iron Skillet, after all, and we’re fresh off a victory on the basketball court—if we want to brag, we have better reasons to do so.

Eli is a sophomore majoring in human rights and English.