Alcohol Policy requires student support
The changes to the Alcohol Policy should not drive you to drink. (See Story, Page 1.) Both on paper and de facto, they are mostly minor and reasonable. That said, we worry about what the new enforcement practice might encourage — and have a couple of ways students can allay our fears.
Our worry is that students are — or may eventually become — so fearful of being caught drinking illegally at a private party that they may decide to drink quickly and heavily before going to such parties, which is more dangerous. Or they could become so convinced that any drinking on campus will be punished that they will drink off campus instead. It is in those unsupervised situations, far from Rice Emergency Medical Services, that real trouble could happen.
The way out of this downward spiral is for students to demand activism from their college chief justices and for the justices to respond. Rice University Police Chief Bill Taylor has said that he prefers that chief justices are the first line of defense against violations of the Alcohol Policy. If chief justices do their jobs and ensure the rules are followed, RUPD will not intervene.
Along with student enforcement of the policy, the Alcohol Policy Advisory Committee — the membership of which includes the chief justices or president from each college — needs to resume regular meetings and contribute to the official policy-making process. The committee has been dormant since Fall 2004.
Whatever our views on alcohol, we appreciate recent efforts to provide more alternatives to drinking on campus. We hope these efforts will continue, even amid ridicule, because students deserve more choices about how to have fun on a Friday night.
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