Dartmouth Bans Hard Liquor on Campus

Dartmouth announced yesterday a campus-wide ban on hard liquor–any drinks with more than 15% alcohol.

In a speech delivered on Thursday to students and faculty outlining the ban and other new policies, Dartmouth president Phillip J. Hanlon cited the sullied reputation of the college due to students’ “extreme behaviors.” In the past several months, Dartmouth found itself in the news often due to numerous incidents and allegations of student misconduct, including sexual assault and extreme levels of hazing.

Hanlon also announced plans for a new freshmen residential community that will be ready for newly-admitted students incoming this fall. These six housing units will connect freshmen with faculty and graduate students early on, and foster an on-campus community among freshmen. In other words, it seems this “most transformative item” is really a measure to combat the appeal of Dartmouth’s powerful Greek culture, especially its notoriously raucous fraternities.

The power of this ban lies in the fact that all of Dartmouth’s fraternity houses are located on school property, thus making them beholden to this on-campus hard liquor ban.

A common concern risen by those opposed to or skeptical of Hanlon’s ban is that students desiring hard liquor will still find ways to obtain it, but now under even more dangerous circumstances. For Dartmouth students in the isolated Hanover, New Hampshire, there is little elsewhere to go for social activities and drinking other than the fraternities. While fraternities at Dartmouth and elsewhere are certainly not extremely safe environments, they do offer some benefits: large crowds that increase the probability someone will notice and stop illicit or dangerous behavior; there are usually “sober monitors” keeping watchful eyes over parties; and first responders and emergency services know these locations well. Students still desiring hard liquor will inevitably find ways to obtain it, say critics, by going off campus, which could cause increased drunk driving, and drinking in smaller, private groups with no sober monitors or first-responders close by.

Despite some skepticism surrounding the hard liquor ban’s effectiveness, the basic truth remains that fraternities and the students who attend their parties–at Dartmouth and across the nation–have not made any progress in reforming their image as raucous binge-drinkers.

The hard liquor ban comes on the heels of Dartmouth’s Inter-fraternity Council unanimous vote last fall to end the pledging process. The vote was most likely motivated by the media storm whipped up by a Dartmouth alum’s tell-all book Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy, which detailed the disgusting and humiliating initiation rituals he voluntarily underwent to become a brother at the school’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Perhaps one of the most disturbing incidents he discusses in the book is the “fratty baptism“: swimming in a kiddie pool “full of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products.”

Naturally, Lohse’s book was just as challenged as it was touted; he could have entirely made it up, or at least embellished to sell copies. But it did create enormous mainstream media coverage, popular outcry, and embarrassment for the otherwise sleepily tucked-away Dartmouth campus. Regardless of its truth value, it remains un-debunked, and it undoubtedly created a major headache for Dartmouth’s Board, trustees, administration, and, most importantly, its high-rolling donors.

Sandor Farkas, a Dartmouth student affiliated with the Dartmouth Review, told The Cornell Review, “While this affair may seem to be the result of various behavioral problems among students, the truth is that a small group of students, bitter for various reasons, triggered the scandal-seeking media to turn their eyes on Dartmouth. In turn, the Board recognized that bad publicity could lead to decreased donations, funding, grants, and other financial repercussions.”

It seems most people, including many students believe that there is ample reason to be skeptical of hard liquor ban and similar measures on college campuses, and ample reason to support fraternity reform. The problem is there currently is no suitable policy that will suitably both curb students’ high-risk drinking behavior and not create loopholes that promote even higher-risk behavior.

Farkas suggests that fraternities serve “more controllable forms of alcohol, such as kegs,” an idea that might work at Dartmouth because fraternities are on campus property but not on other campuses where fraternities are private residences.

Last semester at Cornell, there was some discussion regarding campus policy barring freshman from entering fraternity houses until a certain period in their first fall semester. Members of the Inter-Fraternity Council, including then-president Cameron Pritchett, argued that this university policy caused freshmen to go off-campus to socialize and party at fraternity annexes in Collegetown, making for an overall more dangerous environment.

In his speech on Thursday Hanlon outlined a few other policy measures, including requiring all Greek houses have two faculty advisors–one male, one female; increased sexual violence prevention programs; starting classes earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays; and curtailing grade inflation.

Hanlon, who became Dartmouth’s president in 2013, graduated from Dartmouth in 1977. He was a brother at the Alpha Delta fraternity, which is said to have inspired the hit-comedy 1978 comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”

Update: Fraternity members and presidents at two Cornell fraternities–Delta Tau Delta and Kappa Delta Rho–never responded to email inquiries about the matter.