Stanford U. Bans Hard Liquor Over Sex Assault Case
This won’t stop drinking, it’ll just drive it underground
A recent sexual assault case at Stanford University which involved drinking has led to a new alcohol policy which bans hard liquor except in limited cases.
Does anyone believe this policy will keep students from obtaining and consuming hard liquor?
Campus Reform reported:
Stanford takes shots at alcohol, Pres. Hennessy bans liquor
Stanford University has banned all hard liquor at undergraduate parties in an effort to reduce binge drinking on campus.
The new policy comes after Brock Turner, a former Stanford swimmer, received a six-month sentence for sexual assault after a night of heavy drinking, which triggered national outrage and launched a several months long discussion a Stanford about student alcohol consumption.
In a March email to students, Stanford President John L. Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy observe that “colleges and universities across the country continue to wrestle with alcohol and the high-risk behaviors that can result from its misuse,” claiming that Stanford is no exception.
“At Stanford, we have worked together…in many ways…to build a healthier campus culture around alcohol,” the missive continues. “Despite the progress that has been made, we believe a serious issue still confronts this campus.”
They went on to argue that the school needs new solutions to combat binge drinking and its effects on campus, and said they would be exploring new options to change the culture around alcohol on campus.
Now, the school has issued a new directive banning all spirits over 20 percent alcohol content (40 proof) at undergraduate on-campus parties.
Graduate students will still be allowed to consume hard alcohol at on-campus parties, but only in the form of cocktails, and even those may only be consumed at a party at which no undergraduate students are present.
This, of course, means that shots of alcohol are banned on campus under all circumstances.
College students who want to drink whiskey, vodka or gin will find a way to do it, despite any proclamations from the university administration. More to the point, the liquor ban may not do anything to stem sexual assaults.
USA Today reports:
Critics: Stanford’s new alcohol ban won’t prevent sexual assaults
A new, stricter alcohol policy announced this week at Stanford University is coming under fire from critics, who say the ban on hard liquor at most on-campus parties will do little to prevent sexual assault…
Washington, D.C., attorney Douglas Fierberg, who specializes in lawsuits involving fraternity hazing, deaths, injuries and other cases, said the new hard liquor rules don’t really address the core issue at hand: fraternities that are allowed to self-govern.
“It’s hard to look at this policy with respect to fraternities and be very optimistic,” he said. Though Greek Life organizations at Stanford are considered university housing, Stanford exerts “no responsible supervision” over fraternities.
“While this policy goes a long way to prohibit certain quantities of alcohol in housing, the Greek community is still not supervised like all other Stanford housing,” Fierberg said. “So the idea that increased restrictions (are) going to solve the problem in the Greek community will never be better than its means of implementation. That same assumption has failed thousands of times across the country.”
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Comments
We tried this kind of things with sailors. It didn’t work, it backfires.
When I say “we” I don’t mean to say I was on board with this.
Disagree here, although you are probably correct that hard alcohol consumption will go underground. But there’s a far larger point: alcohol abuse is virtually inseparable from many of the reported sexual assaults. By banning hard liquor, some assaults and certainly some drunkenness will continue–but, depending upon how serious enforcement is taken, such abuse will be increasingly driven to the margins. Give this enough time and I would predict rates of abuse will drop.
I predict the opposite. There is such a thing as “the forbidden fruit syndrome”, and it manifests itself most powerfully in the yoooths.
Border jumping, murder, rape, and armed robbery are all illegal. Those things never happen anymore in our society…
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/politics/us-navy-alcohol-ban-japan/index.html
“U.S. Navy bans booze in Japan”
Uhh, you can’t ban booze in Japan. And you can’t treat sailors like children. And, I suspect, Stanford students will deliver the same message.
Boogs, wouldn’t it be more correct to condemn the hook-up culture? Or, at least, just as accurate?
I am not condoning boozing. But at the same time I am not going to turn a blind eye to what I see as equally damaging. The idea that there’s such a thing as consequence-free sex.
When the fragile cupcakes need “safe space”, then booze in any form is beyond their demonstrated maturity (or more accurately their demonstrated immaturity)Same with co-ed dorms, and maybe Sanford needs to have the state change the laws to raise the age of sexual consent on the campus and campus related institutions.
What banning hard liquor does is nominal. Except for making underage drinkers have to consume more volume or “illegally” drink the hard stuff.
A full alcohol ban would make a presumption of guilt on all intoxicated parties that would have the imbibing aggrieved party wait until they are sober, making evidence collection a problem and adding to the cries that the school isn’t doing anything about the sexual assault and the laws need to be changed (do away with that “presumption of innocence” bit, and the “right” to face your accuser, maybe even that troublesome “trial” bit and go straight from accusation to serving out a life sentence)
One person poops their pants and now everybody has to wear a diaper.
No wonder. It’s a “Junior University”.
The bulk of undergrads are too young to drink anything in the state of CA. That hasn’t stopped them in the last 125 years I’m not sure how this is going to change anything.
“At Stanford, we have worked together…in many ways…to build a healthier campus culture around alcohol . . . .”
When I attended the then-touted “prestigious” Stanford, its culture was built around things academic and intellectual.
We know that Stanford has dropped the academic and intellectual focus, as evidenced by, inter alia, allowing its student body to reject the formerly mandatory year-long freshman course The History of Western Civilization.
Now the top Stanford administrators claim that its culture is built around alcohol. My guess is that those administrators are out of touch, and that the culture is built around many drugs. It also seems that those administrators themselves could benefit from the formerly mandatory freshman course that attempted to teach students how to write.
Arminius: you’re spot on in raising hook up culture and even more accurate with “equally.”
I would add one other word: integrated. Hook up and booze are joined at the hip.
Back in ’89-90 at Western Illinois U, a rookie Lacrosse player (a club sport, not school-sponsored) was alcohol poisoned with “jungle juice” hazing.
How does the school respond? Ban tailgating at football games, and they banned the club.
“We had to do something”, so they crippled the growing alumni tailgating trend for half a decade.
Stanford should have avoided the “middle man” and just baned rapes. /sarc
They problem is that prohibition did not last long enough because of the generations that knew the taste of liquor. It took 40 years for the children of Israel before they got to the promised land because of the previous generations holding the back the younger generations.
Just enforce the existing laws on alcohol consumption, and giving it to minors. No it won’t stop drinking but it will stop the big parties at frat houses. Start chucking frat presidents into jail for allowing minors to drink and you see a lot better policing. Expell any one under 21 found intoxicated on school grounds, well maybe after third violation, need somebody left to pay tuition.
Why not just ban voluntary unmonitored self-aneasthetization?
Prohibition has always worked, whenever it’s been tried, with no negative consequences.