September 4, 2014
The chaotic swarm of students fighting for a seat on the Late-Night Jitney outside of Sadove is a familiar sight on weekend nights. Starting this semester, however, that mob will tremendously shrink in size.
In an Aug. 22 email welcoming the start of the 2014-15 academic year, Dean of Students Nancy Thompson detailed the administration’s concerns in regards to the drinking culture at Hamilton and presented initiatives it would implement “to promote a healthy social climate while reducing dangerous, destructive, and disruptive behaviors.” Efforts include more strictly enforcing alcohol and quiet hours policies in designated first-year housing, restricting the Sadove Student Center basement social space to sub-free events and prohibiting the display of alcoholic beverage containers in residence halls.
Fervent student protest—including many disgruntled posts across social media channels—was associated most closely with Thompson’s announcement of changes to the Late-Night Jitney serve. As a part of a new pilot program, only students of legal age will be permitted to board the shuttle after 10 p.m., and a $1 fare will be charged. Additionally, a Campus Safety officer will be present with a card reader to verify Hill Cards and collect the fare.
In a follow-up email detailing these specific changes, Associate Dean of Students for Student Engagement and Leadership Lisa Magnarelli ’96 clarified that students of any age would be allowed to return to campus from downtown Clinton on the jitney after 10 p.m., free of charge.
These changes to campus policies were proposed in the spring when the administration met to discuss inappropriate and unsafe behaviors demonstrated by students the previous semester. Ultimately, those incidents only became additional markers of escalating student unruliness in a series spanning across many semesters. In September 2012, due to the infamous “Mad Dog” incident, the number of calls for medical assistance on and off the Hill was so great that the Mohawk Valley and nearby communities were forced to declare the drunken spectacle at Hamilton a “Mass Casualty Incident.” Then, in September 2013, student disorder in Clinton received so much attention from locals and the state itself that The Wall Street Journal covered it in its article, “NY College Partiers ‘Took Over’ Village.”
During their meeting in the spring the administration, based upon the reports from jitney coordinators, recognized that the College’s Late-Night service was inevitably endorsing such chaos.
“We’ve had more problems at the jitney than we’ve had in the past,” explained Director of Campus Safety Francis Manfredo. “Several incidents that seemed to happen over and over…Students who are intoxicated tend to distract the driver during operation...They fail to obey the driver, and they usually are highly disrespectful …They’ve caused damage to [various parts of] the bus. We’ve had numerous complaints that the rear emergency door was open during transportation. Students...tend to bum rush the bus, and what happens is they overload it and they refuse to exit the bus. There was alcohol consumption and smoking on the bus…You have a number of students on the bus getting sick on the bus…You have this unsafe...number of students inside the bus, nobody wants to get off, and the driver is stuck driving up the hill.”
He added, “Several drivers came to work here at Hamilton on the jitney and left and never came back to work another shift...That says a lot about the Hamilton community.”
In the two weeks since its announcement, the new Late-Night Jitney policy has generated extremely vocal responses—both positive and negative—from the student body, as well as from parents and College alumni. As the administration had anticipated, an overwhelming majority of these reactions from students were negative. Disapproval centered on two items: the fact that the change limits students’ access to off-campus parties and to the Clinton bars as well as the potential risk that eliminating the jitney service posed for the safety of students. Though the downtown social scene is typically considered a minority experience, in The Spectator’s anonymous survey for the Hamilton student body, approximately two-thirds of the 231 responders stated that they frequently use the service to get downtown.
“Our slogan is ‘Know Thyself’…as a governing body of Hamilton college the administrators should recognize the drinking culture at the school they represent - Hamilton - and work towards making it safer for the students instead of just cutting off half of all night time activities down the hill,” a student responder said in the survey.
A petition to Thompson entitled “Vote for Safety: Reject Hamilton College’s Latest Initiatives to Reduce Alcohol Abuse” was immediately created online, declaring that the new policy would result in drunk driving.
“The latest initiative still is pointless because everyone can ride up the hill (this is when people are most drunk/destructive anyway… underage students will just opt to go downtown before 10pm, moving the pre-games downtown and disrupting the village [even more] than before,” another student-responder stated. Some students even wrote incensed comments or social media posts specifically directed towards Dean Thompson, including, “Nancy needs to be stopped,” “End oppression,” and “Get off your power trip, Nance.”
“I knew people would respond that way,” Dean Thompson told The Spectator, referring to the extreme student backlash to the jitney policy and comments about the suggested inevitability of drunk driving resulting from it. “To say that the College is promoting drunk driving or even causing it by not providing transportation for underage students...just doesn’t hold up for me.”
Yet, the student uproar is predominately based upon the assumption that the administrative action is just punishment for past behaviors exhibited by Hamilton students. Thompson was emphatic in her explanation that the new policy is not intended as punishment; it is the College’s way of taking responsibility for students’ safety. She explained it “felt really irresponsible” for the College to permit the jitney to drive underage students to bars and downtown parties and that doing so “promoted in a certain way illegal behavior.” She continued, “I felt it was a decision I needed to make in order to be responsible.”
However, Magnarelli did note that students had many opportunities to work with the administration. “I sent multiple messages [and] pictures...I asked for people to respond with information, and nothing. The behavior didn’t stop, information about who was responsible was never shared...I really feel like we’ve gotten to a point where there was no choice, we had to make some meaningful change.”
Thompson and Magnarelli were invited to the Student Assembly meeting on Monday, Sept. 1 to explain and discuss the administration’s changes. At that time, the student body addressed its major concerns to the representatives, such as the inability of students living off-campus to get home on the jitney. Thompson and Magnarelli assured Student Assembly that an exception to the new policy will be made for the underage students who live downtown. They also emphasized that students responded in polls that they felt the Late-Night shuttle was unsafe and that changes needed to be made; this decision was not made without disregarding student input.
The policy changes regarding the Late-Night service will definitely last through the Fall 2014 semester and most likely will continue into the Spring 2015 semester. Thompson and Magnarelli, however, are open to student input for other ways the destruction and disruption caused by student behaviors can decreased.”
Despite the sentiments expressed against the new policy, many Hamilton students fully support the College’s initiative.
“The late night jitney is a luxury. The late night jitney transporting underage students to places to consume alcohol was even more of a luxury. Underage students should recognize how much of a luxury this service is and should find better things to cry about, as well as finding ways to make campus more fun,” a student responded in The Spectator’s survey. Other students note that the minority of students this policy “affects” is impacting the college experiences of the majority of students at Hamilton.
Most students and Hamilton alumni who support the administration’s decisions ultimately agree that, as one student-responder said, “This whole debate is an attempt by privileged students to shirk their individual responsibility to act civilly and legally.”
The administration, especially Thompson, remains hopeful that the student body will cooperate with the recent changes and will develop a more positive climate on campus.
“We have to figure out some way to navigate this thing,” Thompson said.
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