Dartmouth College has banned hard liquor and is cracking down on the enforcement of penalties for underage drinking in an attempt to curb binge drinking and alcohol-related offenses, reports Education News.
Grace Smith, writing for Education News, said as of March 30, beverages containing more than 15 percent alcohol volume will be banned. In addition, the university is banning the sorority and fraternity pledging period and rolling out a program meant to curb sexual assaults.
The new regulations have been met with mixed feelings among the student body. Smith quoted Jake Rascoff, executive editor of the Dartmouth Review, as saying the ban will “increase the incidence of surreptitious binge drinking and increase the risk of binge drinking off campus, which will lead to drunk driving.” However, fellow student and president of Beta Alpha Omega fraternity Chester Brown supports the new regulations.
The problem of binge drinking is widespread on many college campuses, not just Dartmouth. The New York Times reported in December that figures from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggest 1,800 students die every year from alcohol-related injuries, and 100,000 students become victims of sexual assault related to alcohol consumption.
The article explained how unsafe campus drinking is especially prevalent in sororities and fraternities, which are hard for universities to police. “It’s fraught with politics. It’s fraught with, 'Are we going to lose funding from alumni who value the traditions?' Also, it’s complex because Greek houses may be owned by the fraternities, not the university,” Lisa C. Johnson, a former managing director of the Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking, told the Times.
What is clear to parents is that sending their children to college means sending them to a culture where unsafe and unhealthy habits appear to be the norm. Nicole Kosanke and Jeffrey Foote, writing in the New York Observer News, said the best thing parents can do is stay connected to their kids and encourage healthy behavior.
Kosanke and Foote encouraged parents who discover their children binging on alcohol to understand the reasons for the behavior in order to offer constructive alternatives.
“Understanding, empathy, positive communication — rather than confrontation and blaming — problem solving, openness, limit setting and consequences (including positive ones) are all tools for parents of a young adult,” they wrote.
Leslie Corbly is a senior at the University of Oklahoma. She loves to read, write and run. She can be contacted at leslie.corbly@gmail.com