INC NEWS - column on off-campus drinking (today's Chronicle)

[John Schelp]

column: Our inconvenient truth
by Kristin Butler, Duke Chronicle, 8 Sept 2006

Nov. 27, 1999, the worst fears of every Duke student,
administrator and parent were realized: then-junior
Raheem Bath died after a week-long battle with
aspiration pneumonia, which was brought on by
excessive drinking.

Bath's tragic death--and the widespread bacchanalia it
exposed--hastened the completion of an
administration-sponsored campaign to alter campus
alcohol policy. Party monitors were added, certified
bartenders were required and Residence Coordinators
were appointed, all in an effort to control underage
and unsafe drinking. Only seven years later, it is
clear that those efforts have failed; what's more,
administrators have created two serious problems where
once there was only one.

In fact, the consequences of pushing high-risk
behaviors into high-risk environments are quite
intuitive. With fewer police and medical personnel
available, these policies effectively increase the
danger for student drinkers. Moreover, because it is
not clear how our judicial code applies to off-campus
offenses, administrators have decreased their ability
to control outlandish behavior.

In the context of our relationship with Durham, our
questions should go one step further: why should the
residents of surrounding neighborhoods be forced to
accept the very "boorish behavior" that has no place
on a college campus?

The answer is very simple if we see Duke's alcohol
policy for what it really is: an attempt to avoid
liability by forcing dangerous student conduct onto
private property in Durham. This distinction is
essentially false, though, because it does not
recognize our ethical responsibility to address such
behavior, rather than push it out of sight. Student
malfeasance will always reflect on our University-wide
community, no matter its location.

Indeed, our current policy's most unfortunate
consequence is that it consistently allows a small
minority of students, on the order of 15 to 20
percent, to ruin things for the rest of us; their
involvement in things like baby oil-wrestling matches
sullies the good name of all Duke students, especially
those of us who have never found it necessary to
urinate publicly.

Consider, also, that only 17 percent of Duke
undergraduates live off campus, many of them clustered
in apartment complexes like The Belmont. For
perspective, 58 percent of Tar Heels live off campus,
and 46 percent of Cornellians live in greater Ithaca,
both with far less incident than we do. Clearly, some
Duke students are having a hugely disproportionate
effect on our standing in the Durham community.

This tyranny of the minority includes-according to the
Lacrosse ad hoc Review Committee--"late-night noise
and loud parties, excessive drinking, littering,
public urination, and some damage to cars parked in
the [Durham] neighborhoods."

What's more, the committee asserts that, despite the
lacrosse house's notoriety, "none of the houses rented
by lacrosse players was among the worst of those whose
loud parties attracted hundreds of disorderly Duke
students on weekends."

Given this level of off-campus debauchery, you and I
should read the writing on the wall: the Alcohol
Policy will soon (explicitly) cover students'
off-campus conduct. Before this happens, I think that
we are all missing a very useful distinction: the
difference between student drinking and student
drunkenness.

Whereas drinking can be both legal and acceptable,
drunkenness encompasses all the unsafe and
inappropriate behavior that has no place in this
community. Indeed, the current policy's focus on the
distribution of alcohol, especially the licensing of
bartenders and the ban on kegs, effectively denies
access to smaller, less organized social outlets. We
can all debate whether or not this is desirable.

Indeed, the current policy's focus on the distribution
of alcohol misstates the problem. This community is
not in crisis because of its guidelines for bartender
certification; rather, we are realizing the true cost
of allowing, "hundreds of disorderly Duke students" to
run wild over Durham.

Consider, then, the possibilities of publicly and
openly disciplining drunken misconduct. In fact, our
current alcohol policy already prohibits "Community
Expectations Violations," which are defined as:
"action[s] while under the influence of alcohol that
[are] disruptive to the community... includ[ing] but
not limited to: driving; exhibiting disorderly
conduct, damaging property and/or fighting; vomiting
and/or urinating in public; cursing and/or shouting at
others."

Drunk or sober, there is no excuse for that kind of
behavior; it reflects a total lack of respect for
one's surroundings. We should transition our strategy
to hold students--and not the alcohol they
consume--primarily responsible for their own conduct.
Recognizing that a minority of Duke students has
treated Durham with shameful disregard, this a doubly
effective way of reducing tensions with our neighbors.
We're up to the challenge.