Stanford bans hard alcohol at campus parties

[Calista241]

Source: CNN

Stanford's undergraduate students will no longer be allowed to drink hard alcohol at on-campus parties, the university announced Monday.

The university's students can still drink beer and wine at such events, but will no longer be permitted to have hard alcohol that has more than 20% alcohol by volume or 40 proof. The new policy also limits the size of the bottles of hard liquor they're allowed to keep in their dorms or common areas to under 750 milliliters.

"Our focus is on the high risk of the rapid consumption of hard alcohol," said Ralph Castro, director of the Office of Alcohol Policy and Education, in a Stanford news release. "Our intention is not a total prohibition of a substance, but rather a targeted approach that limits high-risk behavior."

The new alcohol policy comes two months after the sentencing of Brock Turner, a former Stanford swimmer who was convicted on a charge of intent to commit rape. The case gained national attention after the victim issued a powerful statement. The judge's subsequent decision to give Turner a six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting the unconscious woman also caused a national uproar.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/us/stanford-hard-alcohol-ban/index.html

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I'm of mixed feelings about this. Alcohol isn't going away, and a students reaction when they do finally consume high proof alcohol could be worse.

[TipTok]

1. Good luck with that...

That's a symptom and not the disease...

[BumRushDaShow]

2. My exact words.

[Major Nikon]

3. Derp

[malthaussen]

4. Maybe they should just ban undergraduates. n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

5. A Pointless Attempt At A Solution

And an overreaction to some bad events. Now, everybody has to face a limitation leading to nowhere because a few rotten people did rotten things.

Seems like the 3rd grade teacher punishing the whole class because one person cut up.

[cyberswede]

6. Because college students never use banned substances.

Pointless attempt to look like the school is "doing something."

[Aristus]

7. Good for you, Stanford. Why don't you ban rape while you're at it?

[jcgoldie]

8. I'm sure that rule will work

Nice that they let them keep a fifth of liquor on hand just in case there's no party and they are drinking alone

[Brickbat]

9. Easier than addressing a party culture and/or rape culture, I guess.

[SwankyXomb]

10. Solving the wrong problem

Like all bureaucracies.

[RobinA]

11. I Always Wonder

when something like this comes up - did these people not go to college? If so, do they have complete amnesia? Or maybe those three kids in college who didn't use banned substances because they were banned are running things.

[Xithras]

12. So now they'll drink at off-campus parties

Somehow, I don't see college kids switching from Popov to Gallo over a rule change. If parties with hard alcohol are banned from campus, they'll simply move the parties off campus. Which means more public drunkenness, more drunk driving, and more opportunities for drunken undergrads to be assaulted in less protected environments.

Then again, that last one may be the entire point. Colleges are now being held responsible for sexual offenses because those offenses happen on campus. If one student assaults another in an off-campus location, the college can duck the entire issue and decline to get involved. If a drunk student sexually assaults another drunk student in a dorm room, the school has to address it because it happened on the college campus and makes the learning environment hostile for women. If a drunk student sexually assaults another drunk student in an alley halfway across town, it's not the colleges problem. They're adults and it didn't happen on campus or at a college event. They get to wash their hands of it. Hell, they might not even have to report it in their Clery Act disclosures.

[truthisfreedom]

13. They'll just hide it in unmarked containers

It will become an obsession. Prohibition never works. Repeat, never works.

[a la izquierda]

14. I hope the Palo Alto community likes giant house parties...

and downtown full of drunk students. Because that's pretty much what life is like here in Morgantown, WV, home of the #1 party school (sometimes it drops to #4). Students have only been back a little more than a week and there were over 1800 calls to police about problem behavior and nearly 400 citations doled out.

I walk past piles of puke and trails of blood every Monday morning.

[Igel]

15. When I was in grad school they tried to ban alcohol in the undergrad dorms.

They had a hard time with the idea of a rule saying that those over 21 couldn't have alcohol in their rooms, so the rule came out something like "no alcohol in the halls or other common areas."

There were two responses.

1. Some students took up brewing their own beer ... in their rooms.

2. Some students found that a rope out the dorm window to the walkway below was sufficient for hoisting kegs into their dorm room without violating the policy.

Rule + Bright kids + Bright kids' desire to get around rule = functional equivalent of no rule

[They_Live]

16. It's not a party...

...it's a gathering.