LOS ANGELES Stanford University has tightened campus drinking restrictions, banning large liquor bottles from undergraduate student housing and barring hard alcohol from being served altogether at parties for undergrads.
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Many news outlets have covered the announcement as an unheard-of decision and a tone-deaf response to the issue of campus rape, but Stanford appears to be following the lead of several other universities.
The judge at the center of a controversial sentence involving Brock Turner, a former Stanford student convicted of sexual assault, has recused himself from making a decision in another sex case. Turner could have faced up to 14 years in prison.
“The University does not tolerate reckless drinking – lawful or unlawful – and its consequent harmful behaviors”, the updated student alcohol policy states.
“The policy, which is effective immediately, is an outgrowth of dialogue that has been taking place among students, faculty and staff since March, when President John Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy wrote to students and called on the community to generate solutions that meaningfully change the campus culture around alcohol”, the release said. “These dynamics are unacceptable to us, as are the range of problems that are too frequently associated with alcohol misuse”.
Beer and wine are still allowed, a policy that the Distilled Spirits Council says “sends a risky message to college students” that beer and wine are “softer” than hard liquor. The unusual logic here, according to campus booze czar Ralph Castro, is that it’s harder to assemble a huge bar in one’s room if it’s all made of pint bottles, and therefore it will make it harder for students to binge drink.
Stanford students seem to have a better grasp of this point than the school’s administration does, with mAlthough it would certainly be easy to ascribe student opposition to undergrads’ desire to keep handles of Jack Daniels available at pre-games, there’s good reason to be skeptical of policies like Stanford’s: they don’t work.
The policy exempts graduate housing and parties hosted by campus groups consisting entirely of grad students.
The only unique element of Stanford’s new policy is that the school has requirements about what size liquor containers are permitted on campus.
The timing of the new ban makes it impossible not to connect the university’s efforts to curb the unsafe behavior it alleges stems from binge drinking and alcohol abuse on campus to the controversial rape case that rocked the university not even two months ago. If Stanford students continue to consume lots of alcohol behind closed doors – as they’re extremely likely to do – it could make the issue of campus sexual assault even worse. In a campus-wide referendum this spring, more than 91 percent voted against a hard alcohol ban, and about 1,720 people signed a petition against the proposal, according to The Stanford Daily.
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Boardman, in his letter to students, acknowledged that some of them may try to find a way around the rules. Everyone around you was not sexually assaulting me.
