There have been some notable changes on the Hill since the end of last semester. Packard Hall has been completed, sophomores are once again allowed to have cars on campus, and –— most notably — a student's first alcohol-related offense now lands him or her a direct ticket to level-one disciplinary probation, or pro-one. No warnings, no My Student Body-earned freebies. Yet while Tufts has instituted a decidedly harsher policy, it has not put forward any considerable effort to increase dialogue on the subject of underage drinking. Even more disturbing, the university continues to uphold the misbegotten policy — now rendered even more dangerous — in which a student who calls for assistance from Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) for alcohol-related issues also receives an alcohol violation.
In the wake of the fiasco that was Spring Fling 2009, it is understandable that the administration would feel a pressing need to step up the battle against binge drinking. The 30 TEMS calls that went out that day strained not only Tufts' emergency medical resources but those of our nearby communities. Spring Fling was declared a Mass Casualty Incident and ambulances had to be called in from surrounding communities. While the Daily certainly denounces drinking to that level of excess, we believe it is of paramount importance to prevent the fear of punishment from ever dissuading someone from calling TEMS. The new alcohol policy represents the university's most egregious miscalculation in this realm. It brings to the fore the conflict of interest that has long been an inherent part of making that difficult call to TEMS: Contacting the university health officials can save a life, but doing so can also endanger a friend's enrollment in the university or even future job prospects.
On the other side of the coin, Tufts has done virtually nothing to create dialogue or spread potentially life-saving information to complement its new policy. My Student Body, an online informational program featuring a health quiz, remains the school's primary mode of communicating with its students about the dangers of alcohol poisoning and underage drinking. While subjects like rape, campus violence, racism and sexual orientation are addressed openly as part of Freshman Orientation, alcohol awareness is relegated to an impersonal Web site tutorial. Students are left to their own devices, often learning by trial and error or, if they are lucky, through the advice of older friends.
This sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge handling of underage drinking ought to be put to rest. It is no longer sufficient to be silent and merely go after the most obvious offenders, such as those who get TEMSed. Instituting a stricter alcohol focusing more on punishment than prevention and placing discipline over discussion policy is only going halfway. As such, it would behoove the university to consider using only alcohol counseling as a consequence of being TEMSed. Freshman Orientation should also include a segment in which student Orientation Leaders, with whom incoming students can develop a certain bond, speak to intimate groups of freshmen about their experiences getting acquainted to life on a campus where underage drinking is undeniably ubiquitous. University President Lawrence Bacow is willing to acknowledge that the current drinking age of 21 does present problems — that is why he signed onto the Amethyst Initiative last year. Newly matriculated students who have grown up amidst this repressive system need a peer-counseling approach when they arrive in an environment where illegal drinking is widespread but clandestine nonetheless.
We have all heard horror stories about young students who die from untreated alcohol poisoning. The implementation of this policy is one step down the road to further inhibiting students from clear-mindedly looking out for each other's well-being. We will not know when this law-and-order approach has caused someone to pay the ultimate cost until it is too late.
