Objectively Vandy

katherinemiller September 2nd, 2008

Fellow blogger Chris Adkins addressed the Hank Ingram House pledge not to drink, and the ensuing satirical letter from Head of House Dr. Tony Brown online yesterday, and I’m totally in agreement with him. So I won’t overlap his points, but just focus for a few minutes on the overarching alcohol policy. For at least the past six years, freshmen have not been allowed at Greek houses the first week of school when alcohol’s present, which ends this Friday. Last Wednesday’s Hustler editorial took the policy to task (as well as the Hank Ingram / Tony Brown good times parade):

“The concern is freshmen will be sucked into a life of booze and debauchery before they’ve even started class. This is a legitimate concern, but what sort of message does this policy send to our new students about Greek Life, drinking and personal responsibility? Apparently, the message is fraternities are the prime places to get drunk and freshmen cannot make the decision about having a responsible social life until after that first week of classes.

“Nevertheless, the policy stands, and it emboldens the university’s stance on eliminating the problems with underage drinking.”

I hardly think it’s a secret to say that, while the University would never condone underage drinking, their concern seems to lie primarily with the extreme: binge drinking. In practice, this means a variety of approaches to tackle the issue of binge drinking, while instituting rules on where alcohol can be (like, not in your freshman dorm, though some RAs enforce that far, far more strictly than others) and creating significant penalties for alcohol infractions. But, you know, if you get six thousand intelligent people together, they can probably find some loopholes, and administrators aren’t, like, lurking outside frat houses searching for freshmen.

And, in my estimation, the university atmosphere, particularly for freshmen, is a fairly safe environment for the sometimes very innocent mistake — students are on campus and not driving, a hospital is on campus, and many students are awfully perceptive. I mean, nay to binge drinking, but eighteen year-olds have been known to screw up occasionally.

There are plenty of people who don’t drink, a lot more than one might assume. Non-drinkers are certainly permitted out too, it’s not like their chained to Bible Study every weekend. The vaunted “peer pressure” is only there if you put it there; almost nobody will judge another person for either drinking or not drinking. Social worth is not traded purely in your interest in Jack Daniels — Vandy, despite some stereotypes, does not have some rigid Victorian-like social drinking code.

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