Spring term has begun, and students on campus have survived both the untimely snow flurries and the initial rollout of the hard alcohol ban. By outlawing any alcohol with a proof greater than 30, the College’s attempt at Prohibition leaves students to drink themselves silly on cheap beer and wine. While administrators may have the best of intentions at heart, they have set a frightening precedent. The hard alcohol ban lacks definitive evidence to support its intended goal of reducing high-risk drinking, and it tramples over personal accountability and students’ ability to reason.
A ban on hard alcohol is merely a cosmetic change that will not put a dent in the deep-seated health issues faced by colleges across the United States. Although Dartmouth is the first in the Ivy League to prohibit hard alcohol, other schools in the region have had such restrictions for several years. Colby College, Bates College and Bowdoin College have all banned hard alcohol on their campuses, yet their experiences do not uniformly indicate that such policies prevent alcohol-related emergencies. According to Colby’s most recent annual report, the 2013-2014 academic year still saw 50 alcohol-related emergency room visits, a number that does not deviate from historical trends from the pre-ban period. Bates, a college with a similar enrollment to Colby, has had a ban in place since 2001. Its hospitalization rates still vary widely each year, reaching 44 student alcohol-related hospital visits in 2010.
Rather than eliminate binge drinking or sexual assault, prohibition will only drive dangerous behavior out of sight. According to an April 6 story in The Dartmouth, some students have already witnessed this change firsthand. As one student observed, “Kids are drinking alone in their rooms instead of going out to tails.” And so, a ban aimed at enhancing students’ safety on campus may inadvertently result in more secretive drinking done in private — risky and unsafe behavior by any measure.
Beyond the ban’s uncertain efficacy, there is also something far more concerning at play. Though it remains to be seen how strictly the College will enforce the ban, it sends a very clear message — administrators do not trust students to make their own decisions. Instead, administrators have chosen to intervene, using College policy to dictate right from wrong. This is a shame, as the College is supposed to be preparing students for life after Dartmouth. After graduation, students will be forced make educated, rational choices on a daily basis. These decisions will probably not be as simple as choosing between Dirt Cowboy or King Arthur Flour, Sanborn or the stacks, beer or hard cider. By simply outlawing hard alcohol altogether, administrators are stymieing students’ ability to decide and accept the consequences of their actions.
For 246 years, Dartmouth has shaped individuals who fully understood that their actions had both positive and negative consequences. The underlying logic of the hard alcohol ban departs from the tradition of teaching students to think independently and accept the outcomes of their decisions. And while this latest move from administrators may be the most recent affront to personal accountability, it is not the only example.
When students occupied President Hanlon’s office in Parkhurst last spring in protest, they stayed there for two nights. Administrators only gave students a verbal reminder that they were violating College policy and otherwise allowed the protest to continue. No serious disciplinary action was threatened against the students during the protest, even though their actions caused an obvious inconvenience to College employees. As far as we know, the repercussions, if any, were minor, and students did not need to take responsibility for their actions. The weak response to the Parkhurst sit-in and this year’s hard alcohol both distort the boundaries of personal responsibility in the student-administrator relationship. Whereas the former seeks to take away the chance to make decisions and learn from mistakes, the latter demonstrates that in some cases, in fact, students do not need to worry about consequences at all.
Ultimately, this path will lead the College into a quandary. While Dartmouth may continue to educate some of the brightest in the nation, there is no guarantee that these individuals will have a strong sense of personal accountability — and that would be more toxic than any jaegerbomb.
