Administrators updated the College's categorization of social events, expanded the keg policy and introduced additional walkthroughs by Safety and Security officers during certain events, including "tails."
The revised policy categorizes social events into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 based on the number of students attending each event, the type of alcohol served and designated requisite registration procedures. The past "open" and "closed" event categories will no longer be used, The Dartmouth previously reported.
While organizations tended to act responsibly when hosting large parties, events of 50 to 100 people that now fall under Tier 2 were found to need additional oversight, since those events resulted in the most calls to Safety and Security and transports to Dick's House, Kim said.
Administrators are open to alternative suggestions to the policy, College President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with The Dartmouth. The College initially planned to implement the walkthrough policy mandating that tails events are now subject to walkthroughs conducted by Safety and Security officers on Jan. 14, but administrators have pushed the date back to Jan. 21 to allow student organizations to propose alternative suggestions, Kristi Clemens, acting Director of Greek Letter Organizations and Societies, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
The College will approach alcohol policy as an ever-evolving process, according to Kim.
"The thing that is going to change is that dealing with alcohol is not a matter of sitting around for years and coming up with the perfect policy and then putting it into place for decades," Kim said. "So we're approaching this more as a quality improvement initiative. We're going to continue to improve what we're doing every month, every term, every year, so that we come upon something that really works."
College administrators will monitor SEMP and assess the success of its implementation, according to Spears.
Some student leaders voiced concerns that the addition of walkthroughs during certain events, rather than before them, will discourage party registration, The Dartmouth previously reported.
College President Jim Yong Kim, however, defended the change.
"We're not doing this for the convenience of party managers," he said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "This is for safety."
Greek organization social chairs are required to submit a management plan for various scenarios involving alcohol, Clemens said in a Jan. 4 meeting with the social chairs.
"Until we receive internal management plans from all organizations, we will not activate the new SEMP policy," she said at the meeting.
Alternative plans to the walkthroughs should utilize a peer support network, allow for a comparable degree of oversight and contain a system of "checks and balances," Clemens said at the meeting.
The efficacy of any alcohol policy depends upon the willingness of students to help change the College's social culture, administrators interviewed by The Dartmouth said.
"So much of the success of SEMP relies on students actually adhering to the policy and committing to taking care of one another," Spears said.
The arrests and prosecutions made by Hanover Police over the past year reflect a misguided approach to alcohol control, Kim said. "I'm convinced that the safety of our students will be protected most if Dartmouth College takes responsibility for our alcohol situation," Kim said. "The Hanover Police are public safety officers. But this is really not a public safety issue. In my view, we are lucky in the sense that the drinking situation at Dartmouth is contained on campus, and is almost purely a personal safety issue."
Kim said that personal safety issues are best handled by the College, not the police department. "I am very concerned at the current situation, that by misunderstanding fundamentally the alcohol problem at Dartmouth as a public safety issue, the arrests and the prosecutions are making personal safety in grave danger," Kim said.
The number of students transported to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and to Dick's House as a result of alcohol consumption increased this fall to 105, an 18-percent increase from the previous Fall term, according to Kim.
"There's real data now that shows that even though we've been working so hard, the number of incidents has gone up," Kim said.
In an effort to discourage pre-gaming and reduce harmful binge drinking, the new policy allows two kegs tapped and active at any time at Tier 3 events, Clemens said at the meeting with Greek leaders.
"If you have to choose, it's better for students to drink beer in moderation than hard alcohol in rapid succession," she said.
In response to the new keg policy, students at the meeting argued that the rate of drinking would produce blood alcohol levels significantly lower than the legal driving limit, which seemed excessively restrictive.
"It's called Social Event Management Procedure,' not the Get You Drunk Procedure,'" Clemens said.
Effective Jan. 14, Safety and Security will dispatch a safety shuttle van service for students so that they do not have to walk home alone at night, Spears said. The shuttle system which has been used on other college campuses "for many years" will operate between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. on both weekends and weekdays, Spears said.
"I am sure if we saw that activity was pretty vibrant past [2 a.m.], we could think about extending it, but for the moment we're thinking [2 a.m.] is about when people have made their final destinations for the evening," she said.
In the future, students who have worked with Dartmouth Emergency Medical Services may be responsible for operating the shuttles, according to Spears.
The College also plans to implement the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students program for those who violate alcohol policies and are deemed to be at a high risk for alcohol abuse. BASICS is "one of the most effective alcohol counseling programs in reducing alcohol consumption for individual college students," the 2011 Student Health and Safety Updates website states.
An alcohol harm reduction team, led by 10 students, will work with undergraduate advisors in the winter and spring to educate students about harm-reduction strategies, according to the website. The Office of Residential Life will facilitate an open application process to select the team of students, Spears said.
In order to encourage alcohol-free social events, the College will offer "mini-grants" of up to $1,000 to any student who offers to host dry social activities, according to Spears. There is no limit to the number of grants that may be distributed in a single term, Spears said.
The new programs are supported by an anonymous donor, though the College has not yet determined their definite cost, Spears said.
The College will also offer a three-day Rape Aggression Defense instructor certification session on Jan. 17 to Jan. 19, according to the College's updated health and safety website. The new training will allow students and community members to become certified to lead sessions so that basic RAD training can be offered "at least two times during Fall, Winter, and Spring terms, and once during the summer," according to the website.
In an effort to effectively introduce these new initiatives, students and administrators at the College will work with Jennifer Sayre '93, the director of training and development at Green Dot, an organization that promotes individual safety and community responsibility through training and informational sessions, according to Spears.
Sayre and her associates will consult with the College to develop programs to improve intervention and conduct initial training, Spears said.
"Dartmouth is rare for a university, taking initiative and making a proactive commitment to having the best approach [to the prevention of sexual assault] they can," Sayre said.
An updated Student Handbook for Victims of Sexual Assault and an informational video for victims of sexual assault will be available to students the week of Ja-n. 10, the website states.
Clare Coffey contributed to the reporting of this article.
