Wed 12 Oct 2005
After reading the Record editorial decrying the College’s poor response to a report on alcohol use at Williams, I was intrigued.
Then today I read this article in the Washington Post about how my city has a “zero-tolerance” policy for people who drive. Sadly, it drove home the point at Williams, the only people who are serious about enforcing the law are the Williamstown Police. And that’s a shame.
Why? Because the college has always had a strange relationship with its students concerning the consumption of alcohol. There’s a tacit understanding that if people are “having a good time” and not harming themselves, in a safe environment, that the college isn’t concerned with underage drinking. The WPD have a clear line, however, that extends for everyone below 21. It’s the combination of these two properties that creates a murky area doing no one any good.
Outlawing personal alcohol at homecoming last year, for instance, is a perfect example of the college’s unwillingness to perform its own duties vis-a-vis alcohol. If Security were capable of enforcing a ban on underage drinking at games, they wouldn’t have needed to outlaw all fans from bringing in alcohol to tailgate. Because they were not, however, changes had to be made to the system which ultimately hurt alumni and all people of age.
That’s the sticky point: the WPD, despite any flaws, respects law-abiding citizens. The college, however, seems to view the problem as an area in which it can
Why? Because the college has always had a strange relationship with its students concerning the consumption of alcohol. There’s a tacit understanding that if people are “having a good time” and not harming themselves, in a safe environment, that the college isn’t concerned with underage drinking. JAs are trained to deal with alcohol abuse, but don’t have it drilled into their head not to give their frosh a beer or two. The WPD on the other hand have a clear line that extends for everyone below 21. It’s the combination of these two properties that creates a murky area doing no one any good.
Outlawing personal alcohol at homecoming last year, for instance, is a perfect example of the college’s unwillingness to perform its own duties vis-a-vis alcohol. If Security were capable of enforcing a ban on underage drinking at games, they wouldn’t have needed to outlaw all fans from bringing in alcohol to tailgate. Because they were not, however, changes had to be made to the system which ultimately hurt alumni and all people of age.
That’s the sticky point: the WPD, despite any flaws, respects law-abiding citizens. The college, however, seems to view the problem as an area in which it can seek a “goal” rather than a clear-cut solution. This only leads to tortured student defenses about “driving drinking underground” in response to crackdowns on alcohol use.
What’s the nearest real-world analogy? Probably immigration. If you believe that the United States needs to prevent people from coming into the country without a proper visa/passport/immigration procedure, then by default, you support border security. (Those of us who believe in an open-borders policy recognize that allowing everyone in would actually manage to ease the complications of becoming a legal immigrant, which would in turn assist border security, because there’d be no incentive to illegally cross into the US unless one were actually wishing to do harm to the country. Thus, even with open-borders, we would still need border security. It would just be more efficient. And honest.)
Having a porous border is akin to the college’s response to underage drinking. Sure, in theory, they might think it was bad, but just as I have respect for someone willing to go 3 days in the desert without food or water just to end up working in LA for sub-minimum wage, the college seems to think it’s okay to coddle frosh who wish to drink. Nobody’s getting harmed, right? But just as with bad border security, an unclear alcohol policy harms people indirectly involved. If border security agents are busy trying to prevent honest people from getting into America to get a job, then they cannot focus on the real bad guys or smugglers. And if the college allows underage drinking to occur, they end up harming legal drinkers (like alumni) from enjoying collegiate experiences the way they used to.
Until the college gets serious about alcohol, it’s going to continue the patchwork approach. And that will only hurt those of us who haven’t done anything wrong.
October 12th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
The administration’s ban on drinking games even for those of age is another example of this idiocy.
It’s an unwarranted restriction on personal freedoms based on their unwillingness to actually create a sufficient enforcement policy that deters to underage drinkers, let alone underage drinking game players.
This problem is only exacerbated by the fact there there’s no open social space for of-age drinkers to go where they can have more than 3 drinks. Because godforbid people of age actually have more than 3 drinks in an evening.
October 12th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Lowell: can’t you have more than 3 drinks at the Pub or the Red Herring? Also, while the college might have banned drinking games, I hardly think that has had any effect whatsoever on students playing beirut or beer pong. Drinking games are still the predominant activity in most dorms on Friday and Saturday nights.
October 12th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Ronit — the problem with those areas is that they’re not college-only. They’re open to the entire public of drinking age (except those who have been banned), for-profit (which is normally a good thing, but it’s a deterrent to a college-only alcohol-friendly social space), and not really within the cluster of central campus buildings where people socialize.
Regarding drinking games, I’m responding to the articles in the Record. Roseman cites abandoned drinking games as a problem. Notice that she doesn’t even care about whether they were underage or not — just that students were playing drinking games.
October 12th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
I have spoken to people who actually think that drinking games, especially Beirut, are good ways to drink, because it takes maybe 15 minutes to play a game of Beirut, during which time you consume one beer, which is a lot slower (and thus safer) than other methods of drinking.
October 12th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
Beirut IS a good way to drink. It is played almost exclusively with beer, extends relatively little alcohol over reasonably long periods of time, and has a built in safeguard for people who have had too much to drink (they stop hitting their shots and are booted off the table). Unfortunately, Beirut also tends to be loud and messy, which is why the administration is hesitant to make a drinking game exception for beirut.
Now, on the subject of underage drinking, I couldn’t disagree with Reed more on this. I believe that the college’s primary duty to the students is providing for their safety. Underage drinking WILL occur at Williams, no matter how strictly Williams attempts to halt it. Some of this drinking will be irresponsible. As the college cannot stop this from occuring, its responsibility is ensuring that when it does occur, it happens in as safe circumstances as possible.
Students will always go for the easiest/cheapest drinking option. Free beer at a campus party is about as easy as it gets. Students drinking college-provided beer at ACE parties is also probably the safest variety of drinking that can occur on-campus. Taking shots in one’s room behind closed doors is one of the least preferable forms of drinking, and also probably the most dangerous. You tell me which kind of drinking policy encourages which kind of drinking.
I would hope that the administration would inconvenience legal drinkers and alumns to provide the safest drinking environment for all of its students. That said, homecoming is really a different issue altogether and the current homecoming rules not only inconvenience those of us who can drink, but they do not encourage a safe environment for those who cannot. If you’re upset about the homecoming regulations, complain to WPD–they had far more of a role in the changes than the college did.
October 12th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Actually, while I’m not sure how security’s managing it now, cracking down on drinking games was unofficially given a low priority during my senior year. Roseman didn’t want to officially roll back the policy, but Security was a lot more lenient, especially when the drinkers were underage…
October 12th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
current eph, I think your comments precisely mirror the “tortured student defenses” I heard a few years ago at Williams. People would constantly claim that students would resort to drinking bottles of jack in their room and thus, harm themselves. Hogwash.
Almost all drinking related mishaps occur in social situations, precisely because peer pressure doesn’t tend to take into account one’s height, weight or BMI when considering how much you *should* drink. That fat guy next to you screaming in your ear is reason enough to take another shot, even if you feel you shouldn’t.
The beirut argument is another variation, the “if they’re going to drink they might as well drink slowly” idea. But that is just a variation of the slippery slope argument, that underage ephs will always drink so the first step should be safety.
The fact is (and you can go talk to Security about this if you want to) that Williams was a much bigger party school five years ago, and five years before that, and ten years before that. The last twenty years have seen a huge decline in the size and scale of parties at Williams. Whether people think this is a good thing or not, empirically, it has reduced the amount of alcohol consumed on campus.
Loweel’s point is valid: if I am of-age and I intend to consume beers with my of-age friends, why must the college insist on restricting my ability to do so? The collegiate response, presumably, would be that older students help create an unsafe drinking environment. But I’d much rather have a strict bracelet enforcement policy at Williams than a dry campus. Although, yes, Ronit, you can drink more than 3 drinks at the pub, it seems slightly arbitrary to tell students paying $40k a year that although they can legally drink in a bar, they cannot do so in a common space.
If students think the law is unfair or needs to be changed, that’s one issue. But in this case, Williams has been very successful at cracking down on drinking. Unfortunately, they’re catching a lot of dolphins in their tuna net. The WPD solution, namely, to punish actual offenders is more to my liking. And complaining to the WPD that they are “enforcing the law” isn’t a complaint: it’s what they’re paid to do.
Don’t get me wrong: I love security. (Well, Jean, at least!) But when I talk to friends from other schools who have RAs, it’s clear that most RA’s exist as a way to “police” their freshman. JA’s, on the other hand, exist to help their freshman out, and sometimes that means letting them have alcohol despite their age. I love the JA system, and I love that they are friends to everyone. So the onus shouldn’t be on them. Instead, Security needs to do less “sweeps” and just more simple blame assignment.
If you’re 21 and you purchase alcohol for a minor, you need to be fined and reprimanded. That’s as simple as it gets. If you’re 21 and you’re drinking with friends, you’re completely fine. That’s the law. If the WPD can enforce it, why can’t Williams College?
October 12th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Reed,
Name calling doesn’t invalidate my arguments…The fact is that college students drink irresponsibly at schools across the country despite drastically varying alcohol policies. Many schools have RAs or security forces who strictly police the dorms for drinking. In those schools students drink in their rooms, typically in much more of a pregaming-like fashion. This is still a social occurence–5-10 students will pile into a room, lock the door, and do shots in preparation for a party. Strict drinking policies discourage social drinking (wine with dinner, beer with the football game, etc) and encourage underground drinking (shots behind a locked door).
Like I said before, students who want to drink will and do find ways of drinking. You even see this happening at Williams–frosh will pregame for parties they know that they will have difficulty obtaining alcohol at (and I think we can all agree that pregaming is potentially one of the most dangerous forms of drinking). I remember times last year when security seemed more strict about drinking. Then, when people wanted to go out to a party, they’d get ready, troop into someone’s room, close the door and take shots. At other times last year, security seemed more lax. In these times there was far less pregaming and far more having a couple of beers while playing poker and then heading out to a party.
I’m not trying to argue that ALL underage ephs want to drink. I’m simply saying that there is a non-negligeable subset who desire to drink enough that no reasonable amount of college enforcement of the drinking age will deter them. Given this (and I don’t see how you can deny this), the college’s first priority should be safety. The college should be doing everything in its power to discourage pregaming and encourage responsible drinking situations (like having a couple of beers during a poker game). I can’t believe that even you would claim that the law should take precident over student safety.
I agree that of-age students shouldn’t be restricted in their drinking–provided that such drinking doesn’t contribute in a significant way to unsafe underage drinking. Personally, I don’t think of-age drinkers have a net negative impact on the school’s drinking culture, and if I were the college I would actually encourage srs to drink in common rooms rather than in off-campus bars. Hopefully when the new student center opens, more of the upperclassmen drinking will be brought back to campus. I’d also be very interested in seeing programs at Williams similar to what Colby has, where of-age students can purchase small numbers of heavily subsidized alcohol beverages with dinner. However, this is a separate issue altogether, one that certainly deserves its own thread.
October 12th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
I was about to write almost exactly what “current eph” just finished saying. Thanks for saving me the trouble.
Reed, were you always of legal age to drink? Did you refuse offers of alcohol because of rigid and arbitrary laws that technically made it illegal for you to consume it? Did you ever actually go to college?
Let’s be honest here; college kids will be college kids. Whether you like it or not, college students are going to drink. The claim that strict enforcement of the 21 rule would actually increase safety is absolutely ludicrous. Let’s ignore for a second that perfect enforcement of the 21-rule would cost the college boatloads of time and money. How would this improve anything at all?
The beauty (and safety) of the JA system became clear to me when I visited friends at other schools. While I can now legally imbibe alcohol, this was (obviously) not always the case. Despite the fact that we were underaged at the time, my friends and I–believe it or not–actually wanted to consume alcohol. It was painfully obvious, however, that we ran the risk of getting caught by the RA (and subsequently receiving some sort of disciplinary infraction) if we drank out in the open, or if we drank with more than a handful of people.
Solution: we took that bottle of Jack and started pounding shots quietly behind a closed door. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is an extremely unsafe way to drink.
With JA’s (and somewhat lax enforcement from security), entrymates and friends are free to drink in their common rooms at a much more relaxed pace, while often being monitored by the nearby JA. If anything goes wrong, none of the frosh are afraid of disciplinary action with the college if they approach their JA or any other voice of authority with their alcohol-related incident.
Now that I’m of age to drink, it is certainly annoying to have security tell me that I am not allowed to do so in the company of friends without meeting their strict party-planning guidelines. Do I really care about such restrictions to say that the college should make efforts to end underaged drinking and make it easier for me to drink? Absolutely not. Furthermore, it’s fairly clear that security makes much less of an effort to patrol upperclassmen dorms if they do not suspect that underclassmen are joining in on the fun.
If your rant was more about homecoming, then I can understand your frustrations. A huge number of students–both underaged and of age–drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol at these tailgates and made it an unsafe event for some. The WPD, in its infinite wisdom, decided to heavy-handedly lay down the law and make it nearly impossible for anyone of age to have the same ridiculous (and presumably safe) time. Unless you have considerable sway with the WPD, I don’t think your complaining about lax enforcement of the 21-rule on campus is going to do much to change this.
October 13th, 2005 at 12:34 am
Okay, let’s be clear here. First off, I wasn’t attempting to call anyone anything…I was merely responding to your post which refered to me by name. Hence my desire to use your name in response. I apologize if I offended another eph. It was not my intent.
Second, to the person who asked a series of questions about whether I went to college and consumed alcohol underage, I think that you’re missing my point: if underage students wish to drink (and I will agree that many do) then they need someone to purchase them alcohol. Whoever is doing that is, in my mind, far worse than the kid trying to score a beer in a keg line without a bracelet.
Third, both postings seem to follow a similar logic:
A - underage students like to drink
B - a subset of A cannot be stopped from obtaining alcohol
C - if we assume A and B then we need to care about the safety of B
The illogical step is B, in my mind. “I’m simply saying that there is a non-negligeable subset who desire to drink enough that no reasonable amount of college enforcement of the drinking age will deter them,” as you put it. No reasonable amount of college enforcement? That’s plain wrong. I’ve already explained that in the past twenty years, the total amount of alcohol consumed has gone down at Williams. Just ask Security.
Or take another claim: “Let’s be honest here; college kids will be college kids. Whether you like it or not, college students are going to drink. The claim that strict enforcement of the 21 rule would actually increase safety is absolutely ludicrous.” There’s nothing absolutely ludicrous about the strict enforcement of the 21 age limit at all. If the age were 23, for instance, the college could simply ban alcohol on campus. If it were 18, likewise, it could adopt a completely hands-off posture. The 21 age limit is frustrating, but it certainly doesn’t affect safety to enforce the law.
The reason that I referenced previous arguments I heard while at Williams is that the exact same ones both of you offered were in vogue then as well. And in four years at Williams, I never saw a single person “lock the door” and drink by themselves. I never saw a group of people lock their door and drink together to pre-party. Instead, drinking tended to involve someone bringing a bottle in and people doing some pre-partying. There was never any secrecy involved with drinking…perhaps that’s changed in the past five years. I will politely disagree with the assessment of pre-partying, if only because every instance of pre-partying I recall didn’t involve people getting so intoxicated that they were in danger of alcohol poisoning. Unlike a drinking game in which students have to drink at certain times, pre-partying was always more social, less hurried, and less secret.
Finally, both of you seem to interpret my post, incorrectly, as meaning that I am opposed to drinking on campus. What sort of a sanctimonious tee-totaller do you think I am? I think alcohol will always be part of a college scene…so long as the age remains 21 or drops back to 18. But when I hear the phrase “rigid and arbitrary laws that technically made it illegal” it sounds to me like high-schoolers arguing that they should be allowed to drink legally, or people of all ages who argue that smoking pot should be legal. Sure, fine, that’s something you can work for. Maybe it’d make the world a better place. But drinking when you’re 18 isn’t “technically illegal”, it clearly is just illegal. One could argue that the 65-mile an hour limit on highways is “arbitrary” and that driving 70 miles an hour is “technically illegal” but that does nothing to counter the argument that we need a speed limit.
If you’re willing to say we need an age limit for drinking (right? we are, right?) then that age has to be set somewhere. It’s currently set at 21. Until it drops to 18, I think the law enforcement is correct. Am I callous towards the safety of underage students who drink? Perhaps. But drinking , like driving, is an individual’s responsibility, not a right.
When they asked Elliot Ness what he’d do if they repealed Prohibition, he said, “I think I’ll have a drink.” My sentiments exactly.
October 13th, 2005 at 2:07 am
Reed,
The famous Tequila Thursday of 2000 happenned behind closed doors with little or no supervision. That incident resulted in a kid going to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and random security sweeps of all freshman dorms. They broke into my room and tossed my alcohol even though I was 21.
Therefore, it would be innaccurate to say that secretive drinking does not happen. If someone, apart from the freshmen involved, had been there, they would have known that trying to do 12 shots an hour was highly irresponsible. I don’t like “the we can’t stop it so we have to live with it” argument any more than you do, but it may have some validity here.
October 13th, 2005 at 9:49 am
and I could have sworn it was “Tequila Friday.”
Thursday nights were always pretty fun, even after Tuesday became the new Thursday, and I don’t remember people drinking in their rooms that much.
Then again, what do I know?
October 13th, 2005 at 11:07 am
My mistake Aidan. It was Friday. The Friday night before homecoming if I remember correctly.
October 13th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Sheesh. I graduate and a few months later all hell breaks loose…
You’d think that anyone who got into Williams would realize that doing 12 shots in an hour was dangerous.
But yes, still, a valid point. I think reasonable people can disagree about whether the College should focus on “safety” or “the law” and I guess I fall on the latter side. Which would precludre breaking into your room! (That stinks)
October 13th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
I actually disagree with you once again, Reed, in that I don’t know why any reasonable person would ask the college to focus on the law over student safety.
October 14th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
The original Teq Friday occured some weeks before homecoming. The infamous one occured the Friday night of homecoming weekend in 2000.
October 14th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
They broke into my room and tossed my alcohol even though I was 21.
Is this true? And by what authority did they do this? Last I reviewed, the College is your landlord, and landlords in Massachusetts are required to provide 24 hour notice of entry except in emergency situations.
October 15th, 2005 at 8:06 am
I was a JA in a freshman dorm. They assumed I was under 21 even though my frosh who were home told them I wasn’t. Either way, Security reimbursed me for the alcohol that they threw out after I had words with Jean. In retrospect, I don’t really hold it against them now.