Monitoring alcohol
For years, drunken students at large parties have been able to keep filling up as long as they could stumble to the bar, and many fraternities have been accus- tomed to keeping kegs on tap 24 hours a day. That may change. Starting this winter, all large parties at the College must have officially-registered monitors, and fraternities are being urged to observe uniform tap shut-down times.
It's all part of the College's new Alcohol Policy, approved last fall after two committees, a year of planning, months of Interfraternity Council resistance, and a good deal of fiery front-page press in The Dartmouth. The College's former alcohol policy, drafted in 1980, impressed Dean of the College Edward Shanahan as an "idealistic articulation of principle" that lacked teeth. He felt the language was unclear and the regulations unenforceable. So in the fall of 1983, he appointed a committee of administrators and faculty members to give the campus some concrete dos and don'ts and penalties. And this past fall, a task force made up of students, faculty, and administrators worked out a monitor program.
Most of the new policy is a revision of the old one. Vague definitions of principle have been replaced with clear-cut definitions of infractions including public intoxication, serving an obviously drunk person, and failure to register a large party and penalties have been established for each violation. The committee and Dean Shanahan wanted to require that food be served at all parties offering alcohol and that fraternities observe a uniform tap shut-down time. But when pressure from the Interfraternity Council last spring showed that those mandates would be tough to enforce and might only exacerbate tensions between Webster Avenue and Parkhurst Hall, the requirements were toned down. "We felt it was more important to get students to respond to the rationale," said Shanahan. "We didn't want students to obey only the letter of the policy; we wanted them to look to the spirit of it." The food and tap shut-down rules exist in the new policy as "strong recommendations."
The monitor requirement is the heart of the new policy. Hosts of large parties will be required to keep one non-drinking monitor on hand for every 50 people; the monitors must make sure that the event has been properly registered, that soft drinks are offered while alcohol is served, that hosts are notified of drunken guests who shouldn't be served, and that hosts comply with the shut-down times they indicate on registration forms. To become a monitor, a student has only to sign a Campus Police registration form certifying that he or she has read a brief monitor brochure. For further education, the Office of Residential Life has started a one-time, onehour monitor information session that meets three times a term. The sessions cover how to make a medical emergency referral and how to intervene with a drunk person. They also clarify the monitor's role and provide insight into the Dartmouth drinking scene.
"The monitor is not a policeman or a bouncer," said Steve Nelson, chair of the Alcohol Concerns Committee. "He or she is basically an extra set of eyes and ears for the registrants of the party, someone who's sober and clear-thinking and alert to possible problems and liabilities."
"It's a good idea," said former IFC president, Chris Stoffel 'B5. "We just object to the fact that specific details are poorly thought-out. Whoever wrote the monitor section of the policy seems not to know what goes on at Dartmouth parties. Space is confined enough so that we can't see why we should ever need more than two or three monitors at a party, and many of the duties spelled out for monitors are things the old policy had already made the host's responsibility. But with such a huge legal responsibility, it's understandable that the College wants to regulate parties to the point where few bad printable things can happen."
According to Nelson and Shanahan, the College isn't looking even that far. "We don't look for the policy to lead us to a promised land of no alcohol abuse," said Nelson. Shanahan agrees. "All I hope is that the new alcohol policy will raise the consciousness of students about alcohol consumption a little more than the old policy did."
