Georgetown University police in Washington, D.C., discovered a clandestine drug lab inside a dorm room in a freshman residence hall, the Washington Post reported. Police arrested two male students and a campus visitor Saturday morning for possession of drug paraphernalia, hours after evacuating 400 students from the nine-floor hall. Officers initially believed they had found a methamphetamine lab. Later concluded the chemicals were for production of dimethyltryptamine or DMT, a hallucinogenic.
Students struggled to reconcile the discovery of a drug lab with their image of Georgetown, a national university with a scholarly and somewhat preppie culture. “I would understand if someone got caught doing it. Making it, that’s different. It’s shocking,” said Gina Park, 19, a sophomore from Hong Kong. A resident called campus police about 5 a.m. to report a strange odor coming from a room on the ninth floor. Officers went to the room and found “a variety of chemicals,” said Pete Piringer, a D.C. fire department spokesman. “They did have some heating equipment. They did have a ventilation system.”