This article is the second in a two-part series looking at the alcohol policies of Boston-area schools. The first article, which ran in yesterday's issue, focused on the implementation of medical amnesty at nearby institutions.
While students on Tufts' Alcohol Task Force consider whether to argue for a medical amnesty policy at Tufts, administrators stand by the stricter regulations implemented this semester, as they worry that more lenient rules on alcohol abuse might bring unintended, dangerous consequences.
Tufts' Director of Health Education Ian Wong questioned the fairness of a policy that guarantees disciplinary clemency to students who seek medical attention for excessive drunkenness.
Wong described a hypothetical situation involving two intoxicated students. Under a medical amnesty policy, Wong said, if only one required attention from Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS), the university would be eligible to punish the less acutely drunk student but not the one who sought treatment.
"It's not fair to both people, to say that just because you weren't TEMS'ed, you get written up," Wong said.
Many nearby peer institutions, including Harvard and Northeastern Universities and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), use medical amnesty.
Until this semester, underage Tufts students who sought TEMS' assistance during bouts of intoxication could expect to receive no more than a warning, as long as they had filled out a health survey. But Tufts has done away with the warning system, and students caught drinking underage are immediately put on level-one disciplinary probation (pro-one).
Detractors of the amnesty model see it as a sort of "get out of jail free" card that does nothing to prevent dangerous alcohol abuse.
As a way to reach a middle ground between zero disciplinary measures and a hard-line approach, a number of schools have instituted a system of monetary fines for alcohol infractions.
A first incident of providing alcohol to a minor at MIT carries a $50 fine, as well as a conference with a dean. At Boston College (BC), fines for alcohol or drug violations accompany other modes of punishment, such as community service requirements, and can become increasingly severe for repeated offenses.
BC adopted the fine system last year, the school's Associate Dean of Community Standards Brent Ericson told the Daily. The money collected from fines goes toward student programming, he said.
At Northeastern, an elaborate system of fines — with individual penalties equaling up to $200 — is outlined in the Code of Student Conduct and covers all disciplinary infractions, not just alcohol-related ones.
Wong rejected the notion that fines might be an effective way to curb alcohol abuse, noting that a similar system was in place at Babson College while he worked there and it had disproportionately negative effects for economically disadvantaged students.
"The problem is, for some students, it's a big hardship; for other students, it's a drop in the bucket," Wong said. "It becomes a socioeconomic issue and not always a deterrent."
Tufts utilized a fine system for a number of years, but the university stopped it close to 10 years ago under criticism that "the university was ‘nickel and diming' students," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said in an e-mail.
Reitman echoed Wong's belief that fines are likely to prove ineffective among wealthier students.
"There was … a concern that monetary penalties do not fall evenly across the population and that many students could just write a check without much impact on them," he said.
Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senator Bruce Ratain, a junior who serves on the Alcohol Task Force, said he objected to implementing a fine system because it could become a deterrent to calling TEMS, a chief concern on the task force.
"Anything that makes students less likely to call for help is potentially dangerous," Ratain said. "Whether the student's afraid of probation, afraid of a fine — it's a similar situation."
Ratain said he would like to see medical amnesty at Tufts coupled with deterrents to underage drinking, like "social norms marketing" and an information hotline. But he cautioned that an amnesty clause is not a cure-all to a dangerous problem.
"Changing drinking behavior isn't just about a policy change," Ratain said.
Reitman, who has defended Tufts' harsher drinking policy, agreed. He stressed that "more severe penalties for offenders are not likely to directly stop abusive drinking." Instead, only a "culture change" on campus would put the problem of excessive drinking to bed, he said.
Wong said that an amnesty policy might fail to distinguish between types of drinkers — students who simply "screwed up" and those with a more serious alcohol dependency problem.
Wong's primary focus is identifying and helping students who fall into the latter category. Students who are written up under the current alcohol policy must meet with him, and also undergo an Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test screening.
