The Hanover Police department's decision Wednesday to delay the implementation of alcohol law compliance checks provides an opportunity for students to reduce excessive drinking on campus, College President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with The Dartmouth Editorial Board on Thursday.
The Dartmouth community has the "challenge" of improving campus attitudes towards alcohol in order to ensure that compliance checks are not carried out in the future, Kim said.
"I think the Select Board and [Hanover Police] Chief [Nicholas] Giaccone were very wise in taking this approach, but I also think that they're expecting a lot from us," Kim said, referring to the decision to delay implementation.
Because the option of implementing alcohol compliance checks has already been seriously pursued, it will be difficult to take that option "off the table" in the future, Kim said.
"This was an act of open-mindedness on the part of the Select Board and Chief Giaccone," Kim said. "But if we go back to being where we were before, I think the sting operations are going to happen, so we have to take this seriously."
Kim said he intends to work very closely with both Giaccone and members of the Select Board to formulate an appropriate response to concerns about alcohol abuse, adding that he will "personally lead the effort."
"I'm willing to play any role that the students would like me to play in helping bring about the changes that will ensure that this doesn't happen," he said.
Kim has already contacted experts outside the College to find the "most effective interventions" to reduce excessive drinking on campus, he said. He highlighted four aspects of alcohol-abuse prevention education, availability of alcohol, enforcement and harm-reduction that need to be addressed in implementing a policy to reduce excessive alcohol consumption.
"Preventing bad outcomes with alcohol has to be multilateral," Kim said. "There's no simple intervention that's going to work."
Studies have shown students are more responsible drinkers if they learn about alcohol use before arriving on campus instead of waiting until they have already matriculated, Kim said.
Education alone, however, will not be enough to improve drinking behavior, he said. The community also needs to decrease the availability of alcohol in a way that will reduce the "terrible outcomes" of overconsumption, he said.
Police should enforce alcohol laws in a way that does not drive drinking underground, Kim added.
"We've got to look at what aspects of enforcement are most important," he said. "What's the proper deterrent?"
To determine the proper response for over-consumption of alcohol, police and College officials should make decisions based on the principle of "harm-reduction," or minimizing dangerous outcomes, Kim said.
Even a few changes in policy could substantially reduce overconsumption if the College chooses an approach that has been proven effective elsewhere and develops a comprehensive plan that addresses all major aspects of intervention, Kim said.
"If we can implement them all together, what other places have shown is that the rate of excessive drinking to the point of requiring hospitalization can go down," he said.
In a campus-wide e-mail on Thursday, the Greek Leadership Council announced that they "intend to uphold [their] end of the bargain by re-evaluating certain aspects of Dartmouth's drinking culture."
Beginning this weekend and continuing indefinitely, houses will be "carding diligently" to ensure a "higher standard of responsibility," according to the e-mail.
The GLC encouraged students to use the Good Samaritan policy to help those in need, but also requested that students notify a member of a Greek organization before doing so if they are in a Greek physical plant.
"Each organization has its own risk management procedures and appreciates knowing if [Safety and Security] will be showing up," according to the e-mail.
Kim said he believes Hanover Police made the decision to delay implementation of its enforcement policy in response to the two presentations by Greek leaders at the Hanover Select Board meeting Monday, as well as to the leadership of the student organizations involved, including the Inter-Fraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council.
"I'm really glad that Hanover police decided to do this," Kim said. "And I'm really very proud of our students because I think the response of Hanover Police was because of the very focused, intelligent, reasoned, mature response of students."
