The ban on using out-of-state IDs to buy alcohol in Hotung was not meant to be permanent and has been lifted as of yesterday, according to Director of Dining Services Patty Klos. The two-drink limit for beer and wine, however, will persist for at least the rest of the semester.
Students can now purchase alcohol as long as they have two valid forms of identification, one of which must be a Tufts-issued ID. When Hotung opened on Tuesday, only passports or Massachusetts IDs were accepted. Now, out-of-state IDs can be used as well.
According to Klos, Tuesday was meant to be a "soft opening" for the newly renovated caf?© and the focus was on making sure the new staff was comfortable with the facility.
"This is a brand-new facility for our employees. They're still being acclimated and trained," she said.
Because it is necessary to make sure that staff members are "properly verifying age," she said that Dining Services decided to wait until it was clear that out-of-state IDs could be properly checked for fraud.
While there is an "ongoing training process" for employees that will continue into the future, by yesterday she felt confident that the proper controls were in place.
Although Tufts-issued IDs are not a valid proof of age, students will still need to use them along with another form of identification in order to purchase alcohol.
The use of a Tufts ID is mandatory because alcohol is distributed at Hotung under a club license. The members of the club are stipulated to be people in the Tufts community.
By presenting both a government-issued ID and a Tufts ID, students seeking to buy alcohol can prove they are of age and go to Tufts, Klos said.
Another cause of concern during the opening was the drink limit. Students can only buy one alcoholic beverage at a time, and no more than two between 5 p.m., when Hotung starts serving alcohol, and the closing time each day.
According to Klos, this policy will likely stay in place until the end of the semester, when it will be reevaluated. The reason for the limit, at least for now, is that Dining Services is still unsure if Hotung can store enough alcohol to meet student demand if everybody can buy an unlimited number of drinks.
When these policies were unveiled on Tuesday, students, who were unaware of them until they visited the caf?©, reacted with frustration. Even those involved in planning the renovation, including Tufts Community Union (TCU) senators and Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, said that they were not informed ahead of time about the alcohol regulations.
Klos said that the frustration was understandable. "I certainly did not intend to disappoint or mislead anyone or leave them in the dark," she said. "I regret that not more time was spent on discussing what the new practices will be."
Senate President Mitch Robinson and Senate Historian Neil DiBiase both expressed disappointment on Tuesday with the new policies and their sudden implementation.
But after a regularly scheduled Hotung planning meeting yesterday during which Klos explained that the ID policy will change, both are happy with the solution.
Klos was "making the smart decision ... by making sure that her staff and Hotung [were] as prepared as possible to serve students," Robinson said.
DiBiase said that in the rush to make sure that Hotung's design changes went smoothly, senators may have neglected to adequately discuss alcohol policies with Dining Services.
"We were very focused on getting the place done," he said. "We didn't devote as much time to opening day operations as we should have. It would have been a five-minute conversation."
But Dining Services also could have been more communicative, he said. "I think there should have been better communication on both sides," he said.
Reitman is also satisfied with the current plan, which is the one he assumed would be in place when Hotung re-opened, but echoed DiBiase in saying that Dining Services could have made their intentions known earlier. "But the original plan [that] we thought would be in place is now in place," he said.
With new renovations for Hotung likely to occur this summer, DiBiase said that if there need to be bumps in the road, at least there is time now to correct them before the second phase of construction is completed.
"The nice part about opening [Hotung] now is that we have time to work these issues out before the entire project is done," he said.
