Editorial

Sometimes the most fruitful forums are those that yield no concrete solutions. The forum in McCullough this past Tuesday addressed alcohol use and dorm damage through a faculty-student discussion in an attempt to address some recurrent issues. The quality and breadth of the dialogue is both promising and enlightening, not only with regards future alcohol policies but for more facilitated discussion of hotly contested issues at Middlebury.

The Campus would like to express thanks to President of the College Ronald Liebowitz, Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan, Assistant Director of Custodial Services Linda Ross and all those who helped run the forum. The presentations were concise, yet informative, and the speakers skillfully facilitated a rich discussion. We must, however, address the problematic nature of the topic itself.

The presentation coupled a rise in “high-risk drinking” with a rise in financial dorm damages — an implied causal connection between alcohol use and dorm damages. We see this as problematic as it makes false link between two related, but not necessarily intertwined issues. We believe that rather than a campus-wide epidemic, the dorm damage problem can be traced to relatively small group of individuals on campus. Akin to the ongoing dining hall dishes debacle, dorm damages seem to be a result of privilege and disrespect rather than an inevitable product of drinking; dorm damage is a problem of bowls, not booze, and they should be addressed separately.

The results were, however, rather shocking. With data from AlcoholEdu questionnaires and the College Alcohol Study conducted in November 2010, Jordan presented data showing the troubling upward trend in the amount of “high-risk” drinking on campus, especially in first-year students. The graphs showed the Middlebury survey results in comparison to the national averages for high-risk drinking, and the wide disparities often inspired an audible reaction from the forum crowd.

As unsettling as the data are, we are still wondering what, exactly, the nature of our alcohol “problem” is. The administrators, while presenting compelling evidence that some Panthers can drink most other college students under the table, failed to offer a truly agreeable operational definition of “high-risk,” a term used frequently to support evidence of our drinking problem. If 55 percent of the first-years in 2010, in a class of roughly 600, are engaging in “high-risk” drinking — defined as having “five or more drinks in one sitting” — and 16 of those students went to the emergency room because of alcohol between September 2010 and January 2011, then the risk of truly putting one’s life in mortal danger is really about five percent. Not ideal, certainly, but perhaps not quite “serious problem” our student body is purported to have with alcohol.

The problem, really, seems to be with a relatively small group of students whose behavior crosses the line between acceptable and problematic. The significant drop off in ER trips after freshman year — of the 25 emergency room visits resulting from over-consumption of alcohol in the last year, 16 were first-years — implies that the majority of students who go to the hospital for alcohol once do not go back. They learn their limits, and join the 45 percent of their peers who are either responsible drinkers or non-drinkers.

We can never come to a consensus in a discussion of social life policy — our student body holds an incredibly diverse set of opinions that cannot all be condensed into or addressed in one policy. Despite our many different views, we feel that many valuable solutions were presented. Viable amendments to the party registration process were presented; new approaches to addressing casual drinking vs. aggressive drinking were discussed; alternative methods to bill for dorm damage were also presented. At the end, a thinned out crowd even heard an interesting student proposal for a redefinition of how social spaces are used on campus. The forum was a hot bed for controversial subjects, but almost every participant maintained composure and poise in both speaking with and listening to others.

We feel that much credit is due to the administration for holding a forum like this and creating a legitimate venue for the free discussion of ideas. The tone of the event was very much that of mature adults discussing the solution to an undoubtedly troubling set of problems. Although we may have disagreed about the fuzzily defined yet frequently used term “alcohol problem,” the emphasis placed on student input was very much appreciated, as was the opportunity simply to consider the nature of drinking at Middlebury, problematic or not. The diversity of students in attendance was astounding as most age, social, ethnic and drinking demographics were present and vocal.

Although no long-term changes will likely be instituted from this one meeting, we could see the administrative wheels in motion with the abundance of new ideas, and the sign-up sheets to continue working on the alcohol issue drew plenty of signatures. This type of open forum should become a staple in our community in which the students, administration, staff and faculty can have a voice on issues they care about, from alcohol to housing, dishes to stress, mental health to grades.

To build a community we all feel welcome in, we have to be committed to listening to the voices of our fellow community members. Tuesday night was the first step to building such a community, and we hope many more will follow.