Kegs in Deering Field. Beer pong in the lounges of 1835 Hinman. Drunk intramural softball games.
This is probably not what comes to mind when students think of Northwestern – the school does not actively endorse or encourage the drinking of alcoholic beverages on or near campus.
But inevitably, for most students, alcohol plays a role in the college experience. The dynamics vary by school, ranging from high and dry to raging parties every night of the week.
Northwestern lands somewhere in the middle. Alcohol is allowed on campus, but it’s rare to see cans and cups in the open. Weekends elicit an ample amount of off-campus drinking, but on weekdays, parties are few and far between.
University President Morton O. Schapiro will come to the table with ideas informed by experiences with different campus drinking cultures, both as the president of a small liberal arts college and a dean of a major arts and sciences school within a larger university. Could this change in leadership signal a shift in NU’s alcohol culture?
Rest assured, a new alcohol policy will not be modeled after the 18th Amendment, which established Prohibition in the United States in 1919.
“Prohibition doesn’t work,” Schapiro said. “It’s very difficult. All campuses are dealing with the same thing.”
Even so, Schapiro said NU is limited in what it can do about drinking. The University is also part of the city of Evanston and must adhere to the same federal and state rules and regulations.
“We’re not a separate entity,” he said. “Even if we wanted to set our own laws, we just can’t.”
Schapiro was previously president of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. The president’s house was in the center of campus, where he said he heard students’ night time activities regularly.
Christophe Dorsey, a senior at Williams, said the school is looser in its alcohol policies.”Open drinking is more the rule,” he said. “Any given common room will have people sitting around with beers.”
Dorsey said security will break up a party if a noise complaint is made, but that it rarely issues infractions to students. It takes three alcohol-related infractions for these offenses to go on students’ permanent records.
Williams allows students over 21 to register parties on campus, Dorsey said. Security taps the keg and students over 21 are issued colored bracelets. During his freshman year, Dorsey said he had a collection of colored bracelets in his room, and a friend would call to tell him which color bracelet they were using that night.
“If you really want to get around it, you can get around it,” he said.
Still, Dorsey said he thinks Schapiro will not likely change NU’s alcohol policies.Carleton College, a small liberal arts school in Minnesota with a relatively flexible policy, hosts what may be one of longest and largest drinking events in the country – a celebration so significant it merits a mention on the college’s official Web site.Rotblatt, named after baseball player Marv Rotblatt, is a student-organized game of softball held at the end of the school year. The number of innings played corresponds to the total number of years since the college was founded in 1866.
Players carry around a cup with a beverage, which almost always is beer, said Carleton senior Jordan Narvey. He said many students arrive at the field at 4 a.m., where kegs are lined up for students.
Eric Sieger, Carleton spokesman, said students must be of drinking age to drink beer during the game. Narvey said he’s never seen administrators at Rotblatt, though they likely are aware of the behavior.
“I think because the school allows (open drinking), it’s more casual,” Narvey said. “If you give the students the respect and the freedom to drink as they want, as long as it’s safe, bad things are less likely to happen.”
Other schools, like Duke University, take a more stringent approach toward isolating underage would-be drinkers. Duke’s residential housing is split into east and west campuses. On the university’s east campus, where only freshmen live, alcohol is strictly forbidden. But on the west campus, where upperclassmen live, alcohol consumption is out in the open, said Duke junior Trevor Reid.
“Generally, if you look like you’re in control, if a police officer sees you they won’t really stop you,” Reid said.
Back at NU, Schapiro said it’s harder to control drinking than at other schools because much of the drinking is done off campus. Unlike Williams, which housed most of its students on campus, NU upperclassmen often choose to live in off-campus housing. Administrators and University Police must, as a result, be concerned with on-campus infractions as well as with happenings off University property.
Schapiro stressed that he will not ignore the issue.
“My job as president of Northwestern is to try to make it as safe as we possibly can,” he said. “We’ve been dealing with that for a long time and we’ll continue to deal with it.”
