Students speak at Select Board mtg.
Hanover Board of Selectman Chair Brian Walsh responds to concerns from students who attended Monday night’s Board meeting.
By Jamila Ma, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Greek leaders restated their opposition to Hanover Police’s new alcohol enforcement policy at Monday night’s meeting of the Hanover Board of Selectmen, prompting members of the Board to express concerns that current campus attitudes towards alcohol may lead to alcohol-related deaths. Inter-fraternity Council Vice President David Imamura ’10 and Greek Leadership Council public relations chair Eli Mitchell ’10 spoke at the meeting, which was held in the Hanover Municipal Building.
Members of the Board of Selectmen, Hanover’s executive governing board, cited the perceived increase in the number of alcohol-related arrests as cause for increased vigilance.
“I’m really worried that there are two and a half kids a week who are going to the emergency room because they’ve had so much to drink that they may die,” Board of Selectmen Chair Brian Walsh '65 Th'66 said.
Imamura and Mitchell were the only students to speak at the meeting, although about 20 Dartmouth students were also in attendance.
In his statement to the Board, Imamura said he believes the policy will increase the number of people who drink irresponsibly on campus.
“We believe the new policy is fundamentally wrong and will drive drinking underground and into unregulated and unsafe environments,” he said.
The policy will lead to increased consumption of hard alcohol, Imamura said, as students will be more likely to “pre-game” in their dorm rooms.
“We ask that you help us work with Hanover Police so that we not only enforce the law, but enforce the law intelligently,” Imamura said.
Mitchell, who is also a Hanover resident, said she believes the policy will hurt the relationship between Dartmouth and the town of Hanover, which are currently both “very trusting” communities, she said.
“Students will be less likely to trust the police, less likely to trust Hanover residents,” Mitchell said.
Currently, Dartmouth’s social scene is “very regulated” by the Greek system, which greatly reduces the number of off-campus parties, she said.
The implementation of the police policy would result in an increased number of students driving to off-campus parties under the influence of alcohol, Mitchell said.
“I don’t think people realize how bad it could be if the Greek system is no longer seen as a social option,” she said.
In a press conference on Monday, College President Jim Yong Kim made his first public statement on the issue of alcohol compliance checks, saying that he does not believe that increased criminalization is “an effective or appropriate approach” to dealing with issues of alcohol use.
“The thing that we fear the most is that we will create an environment where alcohol use will go underground and that people will not call for help,” Kim said. “Criminalization is not the right approach; harm reduction is the right approach.”
In light of recent budget cuts at the state and municipal levels, there may be a better way of using “taxpayer resources” than funding alcohol compliance checks, Mitchell said.
Although the Board of Selectmen has a policy of “not acting” immediately on issues brought up during the public comment session of select board meetings, Walsh said he “appreciates” the effort made by students to discuss this issue.
“We appreciate your thoughts and how clearly you stated them,” Walsh said. “We appreciate your offer to work with the police.”
Walsh added he does not believe the town of Hanover has a “huge amount of effect” on student drinking and that students themselves have the greatest influence on the alcohol consumption of their peers.
“This is something that you as individuals, with your friends and classmates, can have a huge effect over,” Walsh said.
Although the next Board of Selectmen meeting is not until March 15, Walsh said he believes there is a chance for “informal” conversations with town officials in the meantime.
“We may be able to make a huge amount of progress between now and then,” Walsh said. “I think there’s room to go positive here rather than negative.”
Students interested in attending the meeting gathered at the Hopkins Center prior to the event.
GLC moderator Ethan Lubka ’10 outlined the goals of attending the Board meeting, but discouraged too many students from attending because of the small size of the meeting room.
“We want them to respect the student body as people who know what they’re talking about,” Lubka said. “Our goal is to show solidarity, give clear and concise points, and stay calm and respectful.”
Imamura, Mitchell and Lubka all said they believe the meeting was “definitely a success.”
“We believe that we presented our case in a way that was strong enough for the [Board of Selectmen] to begin a conversation with us,” Lubka said. “We hope to be able to have informal conversations with all relevant players.”
John Engelman ’68, advisor to Alpha Delta fraternity and a Hanover resident, also attended the meeting.
According to Engelman, Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone said his primary motivation behind the announcement of the policy was the issue of irresponsible and dangerous alcohol consumption, rather than the problem of underage drinking.
“This policy does nothing to alleviate or reduce the amount of irresponsible drinking,” Engelman said. “You reduce dangerous, irresponsible drinking through education and peer pressure, not by [punishing] organizations for serving alcohol to minors.”
Engelman called for an “open discussion” between Dartmouth students, the campus administration, Hanover Police and town officials.
Joe Asch ’79, a Hanover resident and a petition candidate for the upcoming Board of Trustees election who attended the meeting, urged the Board to consider the alcohol policies at Dartmouth’s peer institutions.
“Virtually every college and university in the country faces the same problem,” he said. “We should look at their successes and failures.”
Asch added that campus security forces have a better understanding of students and have been trying to integrate education into their efforts to curb dangerous student drinking, he said.
“It would behoove Chief Giaccone to look at how some other schools have addressed this problem, which I think is a far more intelligent and understanding way,” Asch said.
There was a This American Life episode on campus drinking recently (“#1 Party School”: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=396), and it mentioned research that concluded the only thing that has significantly reduced campus binge drinking is reducing the availability of alcohol by having highly publicized police crackdowns. That same research showed that, contrary to the expectations of some people quoted in the article above, the campuses that cracked down did not see drinking move elsewhere.
Maybe the Hanover Police have been reading this research?
By Jim Matthews on Feb 9 | 2:09 pm
I’m of really mixed minds about this issue. First of all, Drinking alcoholic beverages below age 21 is against the law, and it appears to me that all this energy being put into how to deal with this problem here in the microcosm of Hanover and Dartmouth is a lot of wasted energy. In line with the idea that New Hampshire first and foremost stands for Freedom (with a capitol F) and that we would all be a lot better off if the drinking age in NH were reduced to 18. I went to college in NY when that state’s drinking laws allowed 18 year olds to drink, and so, drinking was no big deal. You could do it, legally, and therefore bingeing was almost unknown. Plus, the police did not have to get involved unless an inebriated person started getting violent, hurt someone else, or drove a car in that condition. Not so many Dartmouth students have cars, but I think that if the drinking age were 18, the Hanover police could do a lot more policing by being particularly vigilant in making drivers take breatghilyzer tests, and really prosecute them if they broke the law by driving with even a small amount of alcohol in one’s blood than is allowed by our laws.
My sons both went to colleges that were quite laissez faire about enforcing their states'drinking laws. Both had had a lot of education about alcohol and drinking, there was no moral stigma attached to it we occasionally had a bit of wine with dinner, served in moderation to all of us.
One of these sons, having grown up in such a home, with a family that was concerned about appropriate use of alcohol, moderation and all that … one of these sons came out of his Ivy league college with a full blown case of alcoholism. I donot think that would have happened had there been an age 18 drinking law. There would have been no illicit thrill of doing something outside the law, and of course, if one has access to something like a keg of beer, or someone’s bottle of vodka, why not consume as much of it as you can? Unless I"m missing something here, isn’t that the way it works? In any case, we are not at all sure whether this particular family member is going ever be able to say that he has been sober for X number of days, weeks, months, years… He has gone through eras in his life in which he would drink and drink all day long while trying to work, and do everything that is necessary to live in this world. Of course, that has not worked so well. So, my concern, is of course for the serious problems that arise when someone drinks so much in a short period of time, that he or she is sufferingg from alcohol poisoning and without medical intervention, will die. If the fraternities at Dartmouth are
By Outside observer on Feb 10 | 5:25 pm