The Battle of the Booze

I just heard about Stanford's decision to ban alcohol at dorm events in all-freshman houses. My initial reaction was "No!!! They're taking away one of the best freedoms students have in a house like Branner. This is going to totally erode the trust freshmen have with their RAs and force RAs to be alcohol policemen."

But then a few seconds later I had a second reaction: "Actually, this is a good thing from an RA perspective. Whenever the house has alcohol parties, outsiders come to the dorm and start up trouble, residents puke and the house is left a mess. Besides, there's too much of an alcohol culture in frosh houses anyway."

But then, after reading the entire Daily article, written by my former next door neighbor Will, I had a third, more measured reaction: "You know what? This ban makes for a bold statement, but it actually doesn't have any teeth. The new law says that 'all-freshman dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alcohol at events in their lounges, hallways or outdoor areas.' But we had that rule in Branner to begin with. Whenever we would have keg parties, the keg was never allowed in the lounge, hallways or outdoor areas. The keg was always served out of someone's room. I'm not sure what the alcohol policy was like in other dorms, but this new law won't change Branner much at all. The only area where this could be bad is if the law encourages dorms to eliminate alcohol altogether. It would be terrible if RAs were pressured to confiscate alcohol from their residents. Without that openness between staff and residents, there would be freshmen getting drunk and sick behind closed doors, which is totally counterproductive. Here's hoping that the administration and RFs really listen to the RAs's concerns so that this new law doesn't make things worse."