Officials work to curb drinking culture on campus
One year after accident at registered party, students adjust to revised alcohol policy
By Jessica Sidman
September 21, 2005
© 1994-2005 The Daily Pennsylvanian
(University of Pennsylvania)
Sixty cases of Corona Light and 700 people at one party may seem like a recipe for chaos. However, last week's registered Sigma Chi and Delta Kappa Epsilon beach party passed without incident.
The event was the first registered party of the school year under the University's revised alcohol policy.
The same weekend a year ago, Matthew Paris, a College junior at the time, was critically injured after allegedly drinking 21 shots and falling from a second-story banister at a Psi Upsilon registered party.
Although the University already had plans to update its five-year-old alcohol policy, a group of students, faculty and administrators was formed within weeks of Paris' fall in order to address the drinking culture at Penn.
This group, known as the Alcohol Response Team, proposed several changes that came into effect at the end of February.
One new addition to the policy requires fraternities planning a registered party to turn in a competency plan outlining how they will deal with emergency situations and other issues that may arise.
Party guests are also now restricted to public areas away from private bedrooms, and the ratio of party monitors and sober brothers to party guests changed from 1-to-50 to 1-to-30.
"A policy alone is not going to change a culture," Director of Alcohol Policy Initiatives Stephanie Ives said. A policy "talks about your values, it talks about your goals, but it needs to be expanded upon through actual programming implementation."
In order to achieve that, the University has also mandated an alcohol-intervention program to help students identify and confront high-risk drinkers.
The hour-long program -- which at least two students from every officially recognized campus organization must attend -- is the first University-mandated initiative to focus on intervention rather than prevention.
Although only about 60 students have attended the two sessions so far, Ives expects that about 500 will go through the program this semester.
Training for the program will be enforced by groups' umbrella organizations.
For example, the Student Activities Council could take away a group's status and funding if at least two members do not go through training and the group already has existing strikes against it from absences from SAC meetings.
Sigma Chi President Matt Berman said the alcohol-policy changes make the overall policy slightly more restrictive but do not prevent anyone from having a good time.
"It makes it more difficult [to throw parties] because there's more rules, but it doesn't necessarily make it impossible," the College senior said. "There's always going to be new rules, more rules, and you've just got to adjust to them. Look at sports, there's new rules every year."
Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Scott Reikofski said that the changes may take a while to really have an effect on drinking on campus.
"Changing a culture is really a slow process," Reikofski said. "If you look back on what fraternity parties were like 10 years ago and then five years ago and then now, you would definitely see a difference. If you look at fraternity parties this semester versus fraternity parties in the spring, I'm not quite sure you'd see any kind of real big change."
With increasingly restrictive regulations for on-campus parties, University officials said they are not concerned that more parties will move off campus.
Berman and InterFraternity Council President Spencer Scharff also said the changes probably are not enough to discourage registered parties.
"There's a temptation to [have off-campus parties instead] because the cost of a registered party is pretty significant," Berman said. "But if you get enough people working and you throw it right, it's a lot of fun and it's a great way to get your house recognition and distinguish it."
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