I was sitting at home one Saturday night reading my e-mail when lo and behold, I heard a very loud crash. I was not looking forward to seeing what caused this commotion, but I left my room to investigate. Three young men were running down the stairs looking proud of themselves. "Do I hear massive destruction?" I asked. "No, no, what are you talking about?" they asked. I didn't see anything so I let them pass. However, upon looking around the corner and investigating the other stairwell I found they had thrown a garbage can down three flights of stairs. Oh, the joys of being an Area Coordinator.
In the process of my investigation, a student reminded me that these boys were probably drunk and would regret it in the morning. I should cease my investigation and work on making the dormitory a better environment. I thought about this briefly as, unbeknownst to me, some of my residents took time out to clean up the garbage. My reply was, of course, common sense. They should take responsibility for their actions and in an ideal world, they would apologize to the residence hall.
I tell you this story to illustrate a common occurrence on this campus and to emphasize a point that doesn't seem to be commonly understood. Drinking is no excuse for malicious or immature behavior. How many times have you heard these lines? "Well, he was probably drunk when he did it," or "What do you expect, she was drunk when she did it."
It's a disgrace that students at Dartmouth would skirt responsibility by blaming alcohol. Can you imagine if society was run this way? A society where you could steal, vandalize, harass or sexually harass someone as long as you could plead intoxication? No, right? Well then, why are we letting our Dartmouth peers live as if this was the case? If we are supposed to be future leaders and respectable citizens of this world, then we should be behaving as such.
I can understand that someone would say they urinated in their bed because they were drunk. Bodily functions can sometimes be out of your control. But statements like "I wrote an obscene comment because I was drunk"? "I find it amusing to sexually harass others when I'm drunk"? "I broke that window, destroyed that vending machine, beat up that guy or turned trash cans over because I was drunk"?
Is it just me, or do these statements sound utterly ridiculous? Surprisingly enough, when I'm drunk I don't get an urge to tip over trash cans. I don't decide that I want to write racial or homophobic slurs on someone's door. I would have to have the potential to do these things while I am sober. These are issues that some people have, unfortunately, been bottling up inside of them. When you're drunk you lose your inhibitions, right? Well, if your inhibitions are the only thing keeping you from these actions then, frankly, I am very worried. Oh yeah, all this time I've been holding myself back from sexually harassing that special person ... come on!
Let's take another look at what should be common sense, shall we? If I were to behave this way when I was drunk, then I would have no right to be drunk. If I realized I had this tendency to break things when I get intoxicated, I would probably make that extra effort not to drink very often.
Let's be honest here -- if you do these sorts of things when you are drunk, you have some pretty major issues you need to deal with. If I were to wake up in a hangover and remember I wrote something like "you faggot" on someone's door, I would have wonder if I was homophobic.
If it's a moment of revelation, then great. If you realize from these incidents that you might have some negative views toward women, have no respect for your peers or just hate gays, lesbians or bisexuals ... then at least you've accepted the truth about yourself. Hopefully one would take the next step and try to change those attitudes.
However, the fact that someone could completely deny the entire thing by blaming it on alcohol is completely irresponsible. The fact that we let people escape responsibility by making that excuse is wrong. Let's try to show those around us that we have the integrity to admit our views, our mistakes and what we need to work on to become better people.
