Alums and alcohol in chapter houses

[lake]

Would love to hear what others think of this, especially the NPC ladies:

A woman I work with is an alumna of another NPC group, and she told me about an interesting situation her chapter dealt with recently.

A fellow alum from her chapter was a real "Super Alum". She helped implement a scholarship for the chapter in memory of another alum's young daughter (who died many years ago), and has a daughter of her own who she would bring to visit the chapter house for events like Homecoming while this girl was growing up. About 10 years ago (right before SA's daughter was about to enter college there), the chapter was struggling with membership numbers and was thisclose to losing their charter. Apparently Super Alum stepped in, organized a big fundraising effort among the other alums to keep the chapter afloat financially while they worked on improving their numbers, and ultimately ended up helping to save the chapter (it's apparently one of the top chapters at this school now).

The daughter ended up pledging her mother's chapter shortly after, won that GLO's prestigious annual named-after-their Founder(s) scholarship, and went on to have a happy experience with this GLO, following in dear old mom's footsteps.

Flash forward to last summer. Apparently this woman's daughter's new member class had a reunion in the chapter house. School was not in session, and there were no collegians there. Just the young(er) alum members from the daughter's era. For whatever reason, Super Alum was there too. On the last night of their reunion, they had a very nice meal and apparently without consulting anyone (like the Collegiate Advisor), SA served wine with the dinner - in the chapter house.

When the powers-that-be from that local chapter found out, I guess they gave SA a very stern scolding for breaking a pretty big rule. SA disagreed, the two sides went round and round, and ultimately SA played the "to hell with you guys" card and refuses to have anything more to do with this chapter.

Personally, I'm with the collegiate chapter advisors/staff - these no-alcohol (and other) policies are in place for very good reasons. But...at the same time, everyone was alum, no collegiates were present (underage or otherwise), no one got drunk and out of control (just a glass of wine with dinner), they're all adults, and on and on.

But then again...if you let this sort of thing slide, who's to say you won't later be up against excuses like "But I'm alum and school's not in session. I want my husband/boyfriend/fiance/guy I just met at the bar/<fill in the blank> to sleep here with me tonight." Situations like that that end up being a 'gray area' nightmare.

I just thought this was an interesting situation and am curious what everyone else thinks. Thoughts?