The recommendations made by the Student and Presidential Alcohol Harm Reduction Committee have substantial potential to make the drinking culture in Hanover safer. The proposal includes a broad range of suggestions, many of which could help students avoid serious harm. A number of the recommendations certainly meet the criteria of policies that do more than allow students to conceal their reckless drinking habits, as we previously argued ("Verbum Ultimum: A Minor Move, April 30").
There is, however, a caveat to the potential success of SPAHRC's most meaningful recommendations. It requires enthusiastic student participation both in the selection of policies that should be implemented and their application.
On the administrative level the proposed changes revising pre-matriculation alcohol education and creating a Dartmouth alcohol coordinator position might do much to facilitate healthier student behavior, but the most significant shift in policy would be creating and implementing a student-run infrastructure for monitoring social events. The idea has merit because unlike the proposed compliance checks, which would have only driven student drinking underground students' reports to Greek leaders could create an effective system of self-regulation rather than a fight to conceal consumption.
Sending monitors to patrol Greek events and relying on members of Greek organizations to consistently turn away inebriated students at the door, however, requires a serious commitment from students. For screening and monitoring to be effective, all Greek organizations must make a good-faith effort. Otherwise, participating houses and student monitors will be stigmatized, and the experiment will do nothing more than shift drinking to houses that don't participate. Similarly, if the student monitor doesn't take the job seriously or the member admitting students is more intoxicated than the people he or she is assessing, there will be no change. Furthermore, administrators will only take a chance on handing compliance over to students if they believe students are engaged, ready and willing to make the necessary changes.
Unfortunately, it seems as though students may let this opportunity pass them by. When Hanover Police announced that they were considering implementing compliance checks, the entire community rallied in protest. Yet as College President Jim Yong Kim is offering a solution not to mention improving student safety he is met by what he called disappointing turnout from Greek representatives at the SPAHRC presentation (SPAHRC releases study findings, May 20). Such a weak response will hardly instill in administrators the confidence needed to win their support for student-run monitoring. Kim is looking for students to take initiative.
If students, especially those in Greek organizations, do not prove that they can give this issue appropriate energy and vigilance, they will have missed a unique opportunity. They will have no grounds to object when Kim shifts to harsher methods, and no one else to blame when a peer inevitably has one too many drinks, passes out and never wakes up again.
