Senate pushes for comprehensive changes to drinking policy, culture

In passing its alcohol resolution on Sunday night, the Senate delivered a wide-ranging proposal that sought not only to lessen the severity of the university's alcohol policy but also to confront what senators and administrators consider to be an increasingly dangerous drinking culture.

The "Resolution in Support of a Healthy Alcohol Strategy for Tufts," which passed by a vote of 22 to zero with three abstentions, takes a multifaceted approach to the alcohol issue, offering an alternative to the administration's alcohol policy but focusing most of its recommendations on preventive and educational measures for stemming alcohol abuse.

TCU President Brandon Rattiner, a senior, was pleased that the resolution passed with strong support.

"I am thrilled that it was passed. I think it was a step in the right direction for the alcohol policy at the school and the drinking culture in general here," Rattiner said. "I think it will have a big impact in the future on the alcohol policy here at Tufts."

In the resolution, the Senate advocates for an amendment to the existing alcohol policy. Under current policy, students are immediately placed on level-one disciplinary probation (pro-one) after a first alcohol offense. The resolution proposes that first offenders have the option to complete an alcohol screening and intervention program with Director of Health Education Ian Wong, and therefore avoid being placed on pro-one.

The measure suggests that a second offense result in a student's immediate placement on pro-one and an evaluation by Wong and Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter; the evaluation could result in additional measures, such as further alcohol counseling.

But the Senate focused on proposing measures to prevent alcohol abuse among students, rather than on how to punish offenders.

"More than two-thirds of the resolution is focused on prevention strategies," said junior Bruce Ratain, chair of the Senate's Administration and Policy (A&P) Committee, which authored the resolution. "We're trying to prevent these things from happening in the first place."

The resolution calls for an expansion of alcohol awareness programs during freshman orientation and increased training for resident assistants and orientation leaders. The motion also proposes the formation of a preventive program outside of orientation "with an emphasis on educating students about responsible drinking, the signs of alcohol poisoning, and the dangerous health and social impacts of drinking."

"The resolution takes a comprehensive approach because it's our belief that that's the way to achieve results," Ratain said.

The resolution does not go into specifics about how to administer or run these programs, instead focusing on simply pushing for their establishment.

Rattiner is a member of the Alcohol Task Force, a body made up of students, administrators and staff members that plans to offer suggestions to the administration's alcohol policy steering committee. Rattiner said that yesterday he presented the Senate resolution to the task force's policy subcommittee and that the measure will likely affect what the task force proposes to the steering committee.

"It will obviously be modified a little bit, but the meat of the plan was right in line with what the policy committee was looking for," he said.

Much of the resolution's language refers to the results of the 2001 Tufts Alcohol Study, conducted by the Community Health Program. According to Ratain, these were the most recent relevant data available.

Though newer data exist, Ratain said, Health Service has not yet made them public. Still, he felt that the eight-year-old resolution was accurate enough.

"The issues it raised and the trends it identified still certainly exist," he said. "I believe if we had used more recent data, we would have been able to make the same points."

The Senate's motion draws on specifics from the study, including reports of "highly distorted perceptions of social norms regarding alcohol consumption."

While the resolution suggests reforms to the school's punitive system, it does not recommend a policy of medical amnesty for underage students caught drinking. Such a policy, which some universities use, makes overly intoxicated students who seek medical assistance immune to disciplinary measures.

Ratain was among several senators who considered including medical amnesty in the Senate's recommendations, but the body later decided against it.

"Amnesty has the connotation that excessive drinking is okay, that there's no concern over it, and there are not consequences to that," Ratain said.

"What we're doing achieves the goals underlying a medical amnesty policy," he added, referring to the resolution's proposal to remove immediate punishment from the university's response to first offenses.

Senator Chas Morrison, a junior on the A&P Committee, agreed with Ratain's approach of addressing both disciplinary and preventive measures in the document.

"Most senators realized the need for a holistic alcohol strategy, one that doesn't intimidate students from calling [Tufts Emergency Medical Services] on their friends in the case that they're seriously intoxicated, however, one that also addresses the underlying campus climate, which encourages irresponsible drinking," Morrison said.

Still, not all senators were satisfied with the resolution.

Sophomore Tomas Garcia, who joined senior Xavier Malina and sophomore Joel Greenberg in abstaining from the vote, believed that the language in the resolution was not strong enough.

"I felt the language that the document had could have been worded better, and the facts needed to be substantiated," Garcia said.

He believes there should have been two separate resolutions. "I felt like it was two separate issues: the alcohol policy and the re-education program," Garcia said.