Drier, Happier, More Productive?

Krikor Daglian
June 18, 2001

While spending the weekend up in Boston visiting with some old college friends, I became aware of a dismaying piece of news. One of my more connected friends from school knew for a fact that our alma mater is preparing to ban hard alcohol on campus sometime within the next two years.

Truthfully, I have never been a huge fan of the stuff, preferring to imbibe on beer, but some people feel exactly the opposite Im sure. So, our college, along with others, is continuing its march towards total dryness, total boring-ness, and in the end, zero liability. And I can understand why they might want this, but then, the changes really depress me.

Being acquainted with a few alumni who graduated three or four years ahead of me, I know that our school used to be much more tolerant in its attitude towards drinking and alcohol. Kegs were delivered to dorms, people drank and played drinking games outside, and the place seemed to have been a general college utopia. By the time I arrived in 1996, things began to shift. Greater awareness of the extremes of alcohol use and abuse on campus caused colleges across the country to tighten their policies towards drinking. Our school was not an exception, with regulations concerning where alcohol could be consumed, in what way it could be consumed (i.e. rules about drinking games) and in what setting it could be consumed (many restrictions on parties). Still, despite these rules, things were not bad  less bacchanalian than a few years before, but still fun. The rest of my college years saw increased scrutiny by the college, only made more drastic when liquor inspectors started making unannounced visits to the college and began busting students for open container or underage drinking.

Now I realize that the law says that those under 21 are not allowed to drink alcohol, and colleges are caught in a jam because the population of most schools ranges from 18-23. (While I think the minimum age should be lowered, that is another discussion, which I might tackle at a later date). Still, what will all these rules do? While I was a student, stricter regulations tended to push drinking behind door and off-campus, which made things much more dangerous. Students who drink too much  and such events inevitably occur  might now pass out in their rooms, where they are away from view and might not receive the help they need. Or they might be forced to drive off-campus to have fun, creating a dangerous situation where drunk driving is a strong concern.

This new hard alcohol ban, if it comes to pass, will have a much more dire effect. I really liked the friendly atmosphere that I felt at my college. It seemed like everyone I met while I was a prospective was happy, and they seemed glad to meet me. I made a lot of friends over the following four years, and I really cherished the social interaction. Even now that Ive graduated, if I see someone wearing a shirt bearing the schools logo, I can go up to them and converse and I feel like they are a friend.

If the administration continues to try to make the place free of any substance or custom that might get them in trouble or just give them a headache, though, I fear a different type of student may start applying. Indeed, if a total alcohol ban is introduced, such as the one our new college president put in place during his tenure at his former school, it will be a very different place. It may be a good place, but it wont be the school I still love. Am I saying that being able to drink freely makes people friendlier? No, not at all, after all, when I entered college I did not drink alcohol, and lived in a substance free dormitory. But I would have never applied to my school if it had a booze ban in place, since I know that the type of person who does apply to such a place is looking to distance themselves from the college norm and post-college life in general. I cant imagine that a college full of people who want to go somewhere where drinking is forbidden will be the same type of people I knew in college, or give the campus the same atmosphere.

It exasperates me that the ones who make the decisions about the future of the school are overwhelmingly not alumni, yet somehow seem to know whats best for the school and its students. It pisses me off that I feel that I have little power to stop the changes, with few powers of donation and only a year since graduation. It pisses me off that I may come back to the hill in the future to visit and find a very different place, the same buildings perhaps, but a different feeling and indeed a different place, one Ill never quite be able to feel a part of again.