Res Ed orders Stanford Row dry for week

[hoosier]

Res Ed orders Stanford Row dry for week

By Brendan Selby
Contributing Writer
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
last updated September 22, 2004 7:06 PM

It is typical for many upperclassmen to celebrate their return to campus by reuniting with their friends over rounds of quarters or beer pong in dorm lounges.

But this year, students living on the Row cannot check into their residences unless they sign a document that prohibits them from “hosting any formal or informal house gathering where alcohol is served or providing alcohol to any new student.”

Violating the New Student Orientation alcohol policy can lead to “the loss of housing privileges and put at risk the social host privileges for my house.”

Upon hearing of the policy during a Row staff retreat, a group of 21 resident advisors sent a letter last Thursday addressed to Director of Residential Education Jane Camarillo to protest the manner in which the NSO alcohol policy is being enforced. University President John Hennessy and The Daily also received copies.

The RAs argued that the policy unfairly “shifts the burden” of accountability from freshmen and onto upperclassmen living on the Row.

“As RAs, we are frustrated by the prospect that our first responsibility will be to enforce a poorly drawn policy sure to alienate our residents. Further, we don’t relish our potential role as temperance police for the freshman class,” they wrote.

They suggested closing upper-class houses to freshmen and instituting a freshman curfew as two alternative solutions to the problem of drinking during Orientation.

Camarillo issued a written response to the RAs defending the new policy while offering to include student staff in future discussions related to the University’s alcohol policy. She cited, as examples of the dangers of abusive drinking, the recent death of a Colorado State freshman by alcohol poisoning and an incident at Stanford last week involving an inebriated upperclassman who fell 12 feet from a railing.

“Abusive use of alcohol is a fact on college campuses and our charge is to restore safer environments by discouraging in every possible way abusive or illegal drinking,” she wrote.

Her letter did not address specifically the contention made by the RAs that the policy would force upperclassmen to drink in less well-monitored environments during Orientation week, such as in their rooms.

“A certain fraction of students want to drink when they come back,” said Sigma Alpha Epsilon RA Luppe Luppen. “This policy will not stop them, it is just going to move them to different places.”

Nonetheless, Luppen and other RAs believe their stance on freshman drinking is actually very close to that of Residential Education.

“We agree that freshmen are in a difficult position during the first week because it is a new environment, and that they will have a diminished ability to drink a responsible amount,” Luppen said. “We just think that what they’re doing is shifting the primary responsibility for this onto residents of the Row, and that’s unfair.”