October 6, 2011
In last week’s edition of The Spectator, Jeremy Adelman ’13 gave us his case for a dry campus at Hamilton. Although his heart is in the right place, Adelman fails to realize that alcohol is an integral part of Hamilton culture, college culture and culture worldwide. One cannot simply excise it like a tumor.
There is a great deal of truth in the admittedly trite expression, “work hard, play hard,” which is used to describe student life. Let’s say instead that there is a yin and a yang to student life, and that it is best to strike a balance between the two. With this point in mind, I will more carefully explain why Adelman’s solution is impracticable.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “college?” For a majority of you, I’m sure it’s something along the lines of beer bongs and keg stands. Of course, we cannot reduce our picture of college to stereotypical, Animal House excess. Such a picture would not only be inaccurate, but incomplete; still, the associations are there. College students have been drinking well before our parents’ days, and will continue to do so well into the foreseeable future.
Adelman writes, “The blithe assumption that prohibition would merely drive drinking into a dangerous underground is unsubstantiated.”
I suggest that he pay a visit to a handful of Dunham quads over the weekend and report back to us. Drinking is already prohibited for underage students, as are hard alcohol and marijuana, yet they all persist on campus because they are ingrained in campus culture. No rule is going to change that. Hamilton’s drug and alcohol policies, as well as our nation’s failed attempts at drugs and alcohol prohibition show us as much.
Besides, drinking is not a bad thing in itself, and demonizing it and advocating its complete prohibition only denies its underlying causes and ignores ways in which it becomes a problem. Drunk driving, vandalism, sexual assault and excessive binge drinking are potentially negative consequences of alcohol, but is this all there is to talk about when we discuss drinking on campus?
Why would we have a pub or wine and beer tastings during Bicentennial Weekend if drinking offers nothing more than cirrhosis, violence and tragedy?
Clearly there is more to it than that. Implicit in the choice to drink is the choice to drink responsibly. Every student has this choice, and regardless of what each individual decides, drinking will continue.
Our best option then is to come to terms with alcohol on campus and encourage responsible choices instead of imposing draconian sanctions that punish drinking indiscriminately. President Joan Hinde Stewart supports the Amethyst Initiative, featured in last week’s edition of The Spectator, which proposes lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, denying alcohol its current status as “forbidden fruit.” It really is absurd to think that, as legal adults, 18 to 20 year olds may enlist in the army, marry and vote, but when it comes to alcohol, they must wait to imbibe.
Adelman writes, “those in favor of allowing college students the freedom to consume alcohol invariably argue on behalf of their supposed maturity pay no mind to the fact that a culture that celebrates perpetual adolescence has pushed back such expectations as raising a family into the thirties.”
I can’t help being perplexed by his standard for maturity. What appears to me the more sensible explanation for so many Americans waiting to start a family is a focus on their careers, not prolonging their lascivious celebration of “perpetual adolescence.” And so what if mature, ambitious young people celebrate their youth with a shot here or a beer there? Is there really something so wrong with that? Again, balance is the issue at hand.
The bottom line is that Hamilton students are a diverse and talented student body, and, while some students make poor choices with alcohol, most choose to drink safely, balancing our studies with our social lives to keep drinking in its proper place.
Adelman writes, “I assert that prospective students who choose not to apply because our college bans alcohol are students we certainly do not want attending our college in the first place.”
He should be more careful with who he counts as “we.” In my four years at Hamilton, I have seen my peers excel and achieve great things—winning awards, starting careers and businesses, conducting research—and many of them I recall seeing holding a Keystone at one party or another. Are they any less an asset to our school as drinkers? Can we dismiss their achievements like Adelman suggests we ought to dismiss the potential of prospective students seeking a school with a yin as well as a yang? Clearly, we cannot. To do so would be to deny the essential balance within student life that makes Hamilton the place it is.
So let’s abandon the impractical and naïve suggestion of a dry campus and instead take a practical, open approach to alcohol that does not punish students for drinking, but rather for drinking irresponsibly. If Hamilton fails to differentiate between the two cases, what kind of message does it send its students?
Such policies teach nothing of responsibility. Instead of assessing student conduct on a case-by-case basis, harsh drinking policies chalk them up to permissible or impermissible conduct, stagnating any meaningful discussion of alcohol-related issues and perpetuating student distrust in both the administration and Campus Safety.