Less than one year after he formed the Social Events Management Procedures committee, Dean of the College James Larimore accepted all of the committee's recommendations on event policy in an announcement this week, including stipulations for closed events and "on the fly" party registration. The new procedures will be implemented in the Fall term of 2005.
The changes come as a welcome modification for many Greek organizations, which expressed dissatisfaction with the College alcohol policy in fall 2004, precipitating the formation of the SEMP committee.
Among the changes to take place Fall term are simplified party registration methods and an option for student organizations to notify the College of an event instantaneously by calling the Safety and Security dispatch.
According to the changes, three different types of social events will be recognized by the College: members-only, closed, and registered events. Members-only events will allow student organizations to hold informal gatherings for their members without being subjected to wristbands or walk-throughs.
According to Mallory Fosdick '05, a member of this year's SEMP committee, students at members-only events tend to know one another well, making these events the safest of all social events and allowing for less supervision on the part of the College.
Closed events will be limited to members and their invited guests. Up to 80 people may attend a closed event, and only one source of alcohol will be permitted at those parties -- either canned beer, a keg or wine.
Joe Cassidy, chair of the SEMP committee, pointed out that gatherings that will be considered closed events were already occurring on campus, but student organizations had no framework within which they could notify the College of the event.
"It's something that we had conversations about on the committee. We looked at what students told us is currently going on and attempted to craft a system that addresses what is happening and allows the student organizations to take responsibility and control for their events," Cassidy said.
The new closed event category allows organizations to call Safety and Security for assistance during smaller events without the threat of a College sanction for holding an unregistered event.
"Our main driver in all of this was that we wanted houses to be able to call [Safety and Security] without worrying that they were going to get in trouble," Fosdick said.
The procedures for managing registered parties will remain the same, though organizations can now register events without using Kerberos software.
Fosdick pointed out that the average partygoer will not notice the changes, which give more responsibility to Greek house executives.
"We basically just took Dartmouth social culture, which we all love, and made rules that made it safe without damaging it," Fosdick said.
Senior Rob Freiman, who served on this year's committee, is content with the accomplishments of this year's committee.
"We've covered a lot of the big things. I guess the biggest thing for [next year's committee] is to see how this policy, how the version on paper, ends up playing out in actuality," the former Phi Delta Alpha fraternity president said.
"It's great to see that administrators are willing to listen to more student input," added Freiman.
Next year, Cassidy plans to resume where this year's committee has left off, in the continuing effort to encourage Dartmouth students to drink responsibly.
The newly-elected '06 committee members begin training Tuesday evening. Next year's SEMP committee will have two more members than this year's committee, bringing the total to eight.
"Most students are making wise decisions about how much alcohol they consume," Cassidy said, "but we still have some students who are consuming more alcohol than is safe."
