Dialogue and debate over alcohol are gaining momentum across the nation, somewhat in response to a report released by Columbia's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
This report is on the agenda of our very own Trustees, who will spend two hours of their November meeting hearing a presentation about the Columbia Center's report and discussing the issue of alcohol use at Dartmouth. The amount of time the Trustees are devoting to this issue is almost unprecedented and should absolutely register interest if not concern in the minds of students.
The use of alcohol on the Dartmouth campus cuts across cultural lines and is not bounded by ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, Greek identification or geographic location.
As a student-initiated study of alcohol on our campus, the Student Assembly's Task Force on Alcohol is an attempt to help form policies that will govern the use of alcohol here in the future. It is also an attempt to provide a structured, formal forum for students to discuss alcohol, hopefully bringing the issue out from back room talk into the forefront of student issues, where it belongs.
For the Assembly's task force to be successful, however, it will require more than the participation of SA members.
One of the largest criticisms leveled at the Greek system, for example, is the amount of alcohol consumed in houses. CFS members have a vested interest in joining this task force, so that instead of reacting to a policy formed without their opinions and perspectives, they take advantage of the opportunity to shape the very policy affecting them.
This task force must include members of CFS houses. Affinity groups must also examine this issue within their communities. Residence halls are another area where the use of alcohol is prevalent. Sports teams need to investigate the use of alcohol by their members.
Everyone in the Dartmouth community has some investment in a discussion about alcohol. You can discuss it now, when student recommendations and answers to questions surrounding the use of alcohol on campus can affect forthcoming solutions, or you can simply wait to react to another policy coming down on us from above; the choice is entirely in your hands.
The one element of the Student Assembly that I feel is most essential to change is an overwhelmingly uniform problem -- it is a reactionary body. The SA has reacted to the policies, reports, issues and concerns of the administration, faculty and students.
My vision is an Assembly that is much more proactive, helping set Dartmouth's agenda by deciding what issues are topical and controversial. The Task Force on Alcohol, chaired by myself and Scott Rowekamp '97, was born of this proactive stance.
The Assembly will be responsible for gathering and disseminating information about a broad range of issues, and will maintain an inclusionary perspective that identifies not only what is happening on our campus, but nationally in terms of what college students everywhere are facing.
Our position as one of the most diverse and opinionated groups on campus, which possesses interactive contact with all members of the Dartmouth community, allows for an ambitious agenda, and it is this ambition that will initiate and complete many significant projects aimed at creating a better Dartmouth.
