Author: Yennaedo Balloo
The exposure of the Amethyst Initiative and President Skotheim’s signing of the petition in our Features section two weeks ago should have sparked some discussion about the national drinking age and what the implications of a debate to re-lower it would be. Whether or not a national discussion and potential legal change of the drinking age is on the way or just a fool’s hope, we should be considering it as an impetus to take a candid look at Occidental and its treatment toward drinking. To be blunt, whether or not things need to change on the national level, things need to change within our school as well.
As Skotheim recognized, “21 isn’t working [. . .] nothing is working.” The fact is that our campus drinking policy is caught now in a quagmire that results from our supposedly liberal college’s imperious approach to on-campus drinking, and its recent oppressive (yes, oppressive) responses to off-campus drinking and partying. This is not conducive to a school with a healthy social atmosphere, but more importantly, this is not an environment where students can feel safe drinking responsibly.
Let’s balance a very basic assumption before I proceed: College students are going to drink. Even if alcohol were suddenly outlawed in the U.S. again and every drop of it suddenly dried up, I don’t think our campus would be dry; I’d still expect someone to be making moonshine in their basement off-campus as a post-apocalyptic rum runner (and he’d be rich from it). National prohibition is history’s lesson to us: Alcohol was outlawed in the whole of the United States, and people just kept on drinking.
So, regardless of what the school does, college kids are going to drink. Off-campus parties are supposed to be places where, free of the school’s buildings and official boundaries, students can host parties with alcohol, loud music and lots of people in one place all at once. While misconduct off campus can still result in disciplinary action, and illegal behavior can still warrant prosecution, only underage purchase of liquor is illegal—underage consumption in private residences in California however, is not considered illegal.
In spite of this, numerous houses have been rebuked for off-campus parties that stayed within proper guidelines and conduct. I have no problem with our college working to keep our neighbors happy by monitoring the situation of students off-campus, but rebuking houses for having parties that were well-maintained (I was at two of the parties that later resulted in formal rebuke), compared to what I consider a “rager” (by Oxy standards anyway), seems unjustified. So, while this recent development doesn’t exactly smack of the Gestapo cracking down on our fun, it does leave us students scratching our heads about how we’re supposed to socialize and unwind on weekends.
The on-campus drinking issue is the real quandary. Most people are reasonable enough to agree that drinking in itself isn’t an evil; it’s over-consumption to the point of staggering, unruliness and passing out that is the evil that our school is seeking to abate. There is a way to approach this: The school can adopt an en loco parentis stance which would give them (under California law) the proper rights to not only sanction on-campus drinking, but even provide red cup drinking (as other schools already do). Red Cup drinking is a policy in which students are allowed to consume alcohol on campus grounds so long as the alcohol is kept in a “red cup” (of course, “red” does not mean to specify a particular color of cup and discriminate against those of the blue or yellow variety). How is providing and even encouraging drinking supposed to curtail our problems? Potentially, in lots of ways.
First, students would be somewhere safe (on campus) when drinking. This would save lots of students from wandering Eagle Rock at late hours drunkenly and from running into unsavory figures. While our neighborhood is on the “safe side,” things still happen, and fewer students wandering around can only help to lower occurrences of weekend muggings off campus.
Second, on-campus drinking sanctions could allow the college to encourage and help educate proper and smarter drinking habits. If the college supports on-campus drinking (and maybe this is just a way to cause someone on O-Team or Reslife a headache making a new O-Week program) maybe the school could actually teach kids how to drink responsibly.
Third, on-campus drinking could be regulated. For example: we could say that at a party on campus, each student is allowed a maximum of two or three beers. I’m sure a system of monitoring this wouldn’t be impossible, especially considering the fancy ID Cards we have these days. The fact is that binge drinking results in part from students who are hidden away, drinking in secret, trying to make their liquor that the school doesn’t want them to drink go as long and far as it can. Lots of alcohol poisonings result from private room parties in which the victim had been binge drinking and had no supervision or regulation.
Fourth, it would greatly improve our relations with the neighbors. Being able to have on-campus parties would lessen the load of off-campus parties, thus leading to fewer complaints by neighbors. What a glorious day that would be, coming to the quad on a Saturday to find a school-wide beer pong tournament taking place; tables and red cups from the library to the Marketplace and Campus Safety helping to keep things regulated, and students cleaning up and showing their appreciation for Campus Safety and for a school that trusts them as adults.
My heart flutters at the beauty of such a vision, but alas, it’s a pipe dream. The fact remains that the drinking age is still 21, and as a result of this, it’s in the school’s best interests not to run into liability issues and alienate parents who would reconsider sending their kids to a school allowing underage drinking (since there aren’t any parents who would turn away from a school that doesn’t allow underage drinking). For those playing the home game: parents not sending their kids here, means parents not sending their tuition checks here.
Even if it is a bit of a pipe dream, the fact remains that if we’re going to engage in a debate on the national level, or at least encourage it, then a debate should be taking place within our house before we engage other houses in it. Because whether on the national level or the college level it’s clear: “21 isn’t working.”
Yennaedo Balloo is a senior ECLS major. He can be reached at yballoo@oxy.edu.
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