After finishing James Hunnicutt's appalling article on alcohol arrests at the college, ("College tops Ivies," Feb. 7) I decided to do a little math.
After all, it is shocking to read that Dartmouth had 106 alcohol arrests this year, compared to 2 at Harvard, 1 at Penn and none at Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Yale. Yet, these figures are a bit misleading, since the disparity in student populations among the eight Ivy schools is rather large.
Therefore, I calculated a more reliable statistic, based on percentages of students arrested. For instance, if 106 students were arrested at Dartmouth out of 4200 total, that is approximately 2.5 percent of the student body. The other percentages pale in comparison: Cornell, .08, Harvard, .03 and Penn .01 percent, with the other four Ivies at a 0 percent arrest rate. If you estimate the average arrest rate in theIvy League at .02 percent, then this means that Dartmouth's alcohol arrest rate is 125 times as large, at 2.5 percent. In other words, for every student arrested in the Ivy League in general, 125 will have been arrested in Hanover.
Does this lead us to conclude that students at Dartmouth drink 125 times as much as the students at other Ivy League institutions? As much fun as that might be if it were true, it simply is not.
After all, The Dartmouth has run advertisements by Health Resources on more than one occasion that 37 percent of all students on campus drink less than one drink per week. So, why are we begin shafted with 125 times more arrests than the average Ivy?
I firmly believe that the Administration thinks that if they can crack down on student drinkers, then alcohol will eventually be eliminated. As such, in conjunction with Hanover Police, the greater scheme of things constitutes nothing short of a big brother/prison camp atmoshpere.
My home town of Princeton, NJ, the site of Princeton University, is vastly different and has a much better approach to campus use of alcohol. Indeed, there are security officers and occasional police cars patrolling, but the general atmosphere of social regulation is laissez-faire. The administration knows students are going to drink. As such they don't make it their mission to battle this facet of college life.
Indeed, at Princeton parties one does not have to worry about open kegs, music, security or any other nuisances with which Dartmouth students, especially 'shmen, have to deal on weekends. I am in no way condoning the abuse of alcohol, but it is time the Administration faces reality and stops envisioning a saturday night where every pea green 'shmen is tucked safely in his blanky after translating Catullus with his professor over a few Mountain Dews.
Furthermore, the current method of enforcement at Dartmouth may jeapordize students' health and safety. I know of several students who would be scared to call security if they thought they or someone else needed medical attention because of drinking. After all, who wants to be fined $550 dollars for a night at Dick's House?
At schools like Princeton, the more realistic deans have realized that students are going to drink, and as such instead of terrorizing them have developed plans such as "saferides" to protect inebriated individuals.
