While the athletic department has a broad policy on alcohol consumption by student athletes, individual teams have varying expectations for those in season. Individual team alcohol policies received increased attention after members of the men's and women's squash teams were forced to forfeit matches on Feb. 10 after consuming alcohol violation of the teams' code of conduct.
The athletic department currently has an official three-part conduct and alcohol policy stipulating that athletes must abstain from drinking while traveling or attending team events, comply with federal and state laws regarding alcohol consumption and follow policies established by coaches and captains of their teams, executive associate athletic director Brian Austin said.
This policy has been in place for over 10 years and there are no plans to revise the policy in the near future.
Overly specific unified policies are not conducive to serving the needs of the various teams, he said.
If athletes violate departmental policy, the athletic department takes action against the athlete or the team, but when team policies are violated, the head coach is in charge of the response, Austin said.
If Dartmouth's rules are also broken, athletes may face additional repercussions from the College.
Departmental policy violations are not brought to the athletic department's attention regularly.
"It's certainly not something that happens every day or even every week," Austin said.
Violations usually come to the department's attention when athletes are picked up by Hanover Police or Safety and Security, but, on occasion, the department investigates individual incidents.
In theory, if an entire team has violated their team policies or the department policy, the department could suspend the team from playing.
"The NCAA does not even have specific rules related to alcohol polices," Austin said. "If a team went to a game and had a crazy party, they might be banned, but in general it doesn't even have a rule on underage drinking."
Individual teams have differing policies, ranging from the 48-hour rule, under which athletes cannot consume alcohol for 48 hours before meets, to entirely dry seasons. Most teams do not publish their policies.
"Coaches do not try to hide anything, team policy for the most part is just private," Austin said.
The men's track and field team does not have an official policy regarding alcohol consumption, former team member Taylor Watson '16 said. The coaches neither explicitly ban athletes from drinking nor are athletes who are caught drinking removed from the team.
Athletes are only temporarily suspended from competition if they are picked up by Safety and Security under the Good Samaritan policy, but it is well known that coaches frown upon alcohol consumption, Watson said.
"They make it abundantly clear that they prefer for you not to drink," Watson said. "They frame it in different lights to try to convince you, but they understand that it's an unrealistic expectation to say it can't happen."
Coaches lecture on the negative effects of alcohol consumption on athletic performance, making the case that athletes can let their teammates down by drinking, Watson said.
Most members of the track team do not drink while in season, opting for water pong and other non-alcoholic games."I don't go out much, so I don't see them, and I don't make it a habit to ask people what they do, but I'm 99 percent sure almost all of the team doesn't drink in season," Watson said.
The club rugby team receives many of the privileges reserved for varsity athletes, but is more loosely regulated by the College, team member Max Hannam '16 said. While athletes have to adhere to athletic department policies, the team itself does not have an alcohol policy, he said.
Coaches do not explicitly address drinking and trust that the players will refrain from drinking 24 hours before games, Hannam said.
A rugby team member. who wished to remain anonymous to avoid implicating his teammates, said that the rugby team has a strong drinking culture.
"Maybe once a month, usually for big events like Winter Carnival, when there seems to be a nice break in work or after a big game, we would all go to a frat," he said.
The rugby team member does not believe that drinking has negatively affected the team's performance.
"If anything, it's brought us closer and made us perform better as a team," he said. "Everyone on the team really know their limits and the older boys really lookout for the younger boys."
Representatives from the men's basketball, men's soccer, women's basketball, women's rowing, diving and swimming and skiing teams declined to comment, citing the private nature of their teams' alcohol rules.
