Sunny Mitra
As the Alcohol Task Force met for the first time on Monday, a great portion of the student body waited in anticipation for the first big announcement from this group. What the current campus climate needs from the Task Force is not an addition to the Scot’s Key, but rather a change in practices that will allow students to feel safe during the weekends.
If the Task Force ends up talking policy, we will have created “Campus Council for Alcohol,” and not a student-run group that works with the administration to adopt best practices to ensure that students enjoy their weekends without worrying about their safety.
The situation that we have on campus in regard to alcohol is not a policy problem; it is just a case of bad implementation and lack of creativity in practices.
Specifically, we need to address the lack of designated party spaces on campus, along with the fact that a trusting relationship needs to be built between the administration and the hosts of the parties.
With Luce and Douglass off limits, we are left with Bissman Section VIII lounge and Gault Schoolhouse as the only options for locations to host an open party on campus. In this situation, groups are forced to host their parties in off-campus houses outside the purview of campus security.
This causes two problems: one, students who go overboard or happen to be drinking under-age are now being dealt with by the police and not campus security, which has more severe implications; two, the College has no way of regulating what goes on at these parties which we all know opens a whole new can of worms!
The solution lies in working creatively to identify additional party spaces (not just the UG), to prevent the problem from spilling over to the off-campus houses.
The lack of trust between the administration and the ones hosting parties on campus has caused the alcohol situation to erupt this year.
As the administration plays the proactive guardian trying to do away with issues related to drinking on campus, the focus seems to have shifted from ensuring that students are safe during their weekend activities to ensuring that students are not drinking at parties.
By preventing students from drinking at parties, we are not solving a problem; instead, we are forcing it into the confines of the rooms. The difference lies in the fact that when a student is drinking at a party, their peers are able to monitor them, which is not the case when you are drinking behind closed doors.
Allowing students to take charge of their own parties also allows the administration to effectively control reckless drinking behavior, which is inevitable at any open party. The solution to the drinking problems, therefore, lies not in cracking down on parties but in allowing more of these open parties where an atmosphere of peer policing exists.
Further additions to the policy would lead to the consequence of garnering further mistrust between the administration and the student body. At this critical juncture, that would strike a severe blow to the primary purpose of the Alcohol Task Force to create an environment of trust where students and administration could work together to address the alcohol issues on campus.
Sunny Mitra, a contributing writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at SMitra16@wooster.edu.