Author: Cordelia Kenney
People like to get inebriated. They always have, and they always will. The recent year-long moratorium imposed on school dances after six transports from the Toga dance, however, testifies to the administration’s exasperation with the drinking culture at Occidental. While the crackdown evinces the need for a radical reappraisal of Occidental’s policies regarding alcohol use, it would be unfair and callow to solely blame the staff for the frequency of alcohol poisonings on campus. It is equally uncouth to point fingers at the students who were transported for “ruining” Occidental’s social life by incurring such restrictive policies from the administration. Instead of mounting the figurative high horse and attacking either party, both students and staff need to work together to understand binge drinking culture in order to facilitate safer drinking behaviors.
Telling people to stop doing activities that they enjoy has never been a particularly effective approach, as evidenced by abstinence-only education programs and the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. The Occidental Weekly has clearly articulated elsewhere the need to reassess the administration’s deeply flawed understanding of how to combat binge drinking on campus. By endorsing punitive measures and continually failing to admit that students can consume alcohol on campus in healthy ways, the administration hinders open discussion of the problematic binge drinking culture that is characteristic of Occidental and many other college campuses. The simplistic solution of eliminating the venue at which most transports occur is no solution at all; it does nothing to address the underlying factors that promote such excessive consumption of alcohol. Instead, it leads to more dangerous situations and more irresponsible decisions.
In Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Life Tamara Rice’s campus-wide email the afternoon before Toga, she implored students to make responsible decisions and to hold each other accountable. She described the admirable efforts of student organizations to promote smart, safe decisions and outlined the amenities that would be accessible throughout the night. It bears noting that these kinds of student-driven awareness and intervention campaigns are unquestionably a step in the right direction. Toward the end of that email, however, Rice reveals her and her cohorts’ misguided perception of the problem at hand.
“Over the years, Toga has become a notorious binge night,” she said. “This has resulted in reckless behavior, damage to property, hospital transports, sexual assault. This has to stop.”
Rice is absolutely right: this “reckless behavior” has to stop. But she is also right that this kind of recklessness is a recent development; Rice plainly states that the association of Toga with binge drinking is not a perpetual one. Something about Occidental’s social life, particularly its school-wide dances, encourages this behavior, and perhaps framing these kinds of actions as entirely the fault of irresponsible students deliberately evades tackling the larger, more complicated question of why students binge drink.
Giving students an ultimatum to drink responsibly or have school dances sacrificed for a year also denies the reality that an ever-tightening policy on alcohol use intensifies rather than mitigates the negative consequences of binge drinking. At least at dances, intoxicated students are in view of Campus Safety and other students who can lead them to help. Pushing binge drinking out of sight and out of mind eliminates this possible safety net without eliminating the motivation to get drunk.
Rice concludes her email with a final piece of advice: “Don’t end up being ‘that person.’ You know what I’m talking about……”
It would likely not be an exaggeration to say that every Occidental student has a friend who has been “that person,” who has been the individual transported for alcohol poisoning or has at least teetered on the edge of needing medical attention. While no one starts the night with the intention of ending up in the hospital, many students do occasionally (or in some cases often) go into a night of drinking with the mindset of wanting to get absolutely hammered.
And while it was inappropriate for Rice to frame the unfortunate frequency of transports at school dances in such simplistic and downright insensitive terms, she has a valid point. Yes, the administration needs to engage in a more receptive dialogue with students rather than telling them to “stop” or “be smart.” But students themselves need to take a far greater degree of responsibility in their own unhealthy behaviors and recognize that hospitalizations reflect a collective problem.
Students who mock and demean others who have been transported for alcohol poisoning are frankly hypocrites. Their anger at the irresponsible decisions of their peers is most likely a reflection of their own embarrassment for having close calls themselves. Rice is right again; no one wants to be that person vomiting in the bathroom or sleeping on the couch for a disconcertingly long time.
Something about the environment in which Occidental students consume alcohol contributes to the numerous incidences of hospitalizations, but the school is not exceptional in unhealthy drinking behaviors, though. According to a July 2013 National Institute of Health study, over half of college students binge drank within two weeks of when the study was conducted.
By no means do all students rely on alcohol or other substances to take respite from academics on the weekend. Nor is it inherently bad if people do decide to partake in substance use. But excessive, uncontrolled drinking has become somewhat normal, or perhaps even expected, on most college campuses. Somehow college stopped being about the pursuit of knowledge and instead became about stacking cups the fastest or making memories that one cannot actually remember.
There are so many more important — not to mention more interesting — things to talk about than whether that party this weekend is going to get busted.
Binge drinking has become an almost indispensable feature of the modern college experience, and neither the students nor the administration are actively trying to find out why. The finger-pointing by students evades recognition of their own unhealthy behaviors and attitudes. The administrators of this college, flawed as they may be, do care about the well-being of this institution. Although some dubious decisions related to sexual assault and housing policies are largely out of students’ hands, problems like binge drinking cannot so tidily be blamed on the administrators.
The decisions and actions of students do not exist in a vacuum independent of influence from friends, society and existing bureaucratic structures. Reducing the prevalence of binge drinking to students’ lack of self-control or restrictive college guidelines will not lower the number of transports at school dances. The problem is more complicated than that. No simple, straightforward solution exists. The only certainty is that refusing to acknowledge and directly confront the widespread incorporation of alcohol in student life will continue to accomplish nothing. At the same time, bemoaning ineffective policies and evading a sobering look at the culture surrounding out-of-control drinking behaviors will similarly fail to change anything. What exactly a constructive dynamic between students and staff will look like is uncertain; but for starters both groups must stop demonizing the other party.
Cordelia Kenney is a senior history major. She can be reached at ckenney@oxy.edu or on Twitter @WklyOpinions.
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