Dartblog

If random walk-throughs, registered parties, bartenders, and banning freshmen from Greek houses don’t sound familiar to you as well-established administration policies, that’s only because you are at Dartmouth and not at Colgate. Dartmouth’s current and Colgate’s erstwhile Dean of the College, Charlotte Johnson, imposed them on ‘Gate students during her four and a half-year tenure in Hamilton.

As we have already seen, Dean Johnson followed a write ‘em up as fast as you can policy at Colgate. In each year from 2008-2010, approximately 13% of Colgate students were disciplined by the university for either alcohol or drug violations.

However the law of unintended consequences kicked in. Drinking went underground, and ever more students abused alcohol to an ever greater extent. As a result, the administration tightened regulations further, as described in an October 15, 2010 Editor’s Column in the Colgate Maroon-News entitled “Making Colgate Safer”:

A recent spike in alcohol-related hospitalizations has resulted in a new set of University policies including bans on outdoor/porch drinking, freshmen being barred from Greek events and unannounced late night walk-throughs of Broad Street housing. These policies send one clear signal: we don’t trust our students. And the sad thing is that, like any prohibition, it undermines the trust and respect that is at the core of any healthy community.

The result of these policies at Colgate? Alcohol abuse became even worse according to a March 24, 2011 Editor’s Column :

Yet, in the three years since Res Life started re­quiring registration, there has been a noticeable spike in alcohol-related hospitalizations and deterioration in the relationship between Broad Street and the administration. Somehow, with increased oversight and planning, Colgate has become less safe…

The administration has made it too risky for fraternities to hold non-exclusive events that the larger campus can attend, but those same fraternities are criticized for being socially exclusive…

While each of these policies is implemented with good intentions, the administra­tion seems unaware that prohibition policies have not curbed behavior but, rather, have displaced drinking to unregulated and unsafe environments.

Concerns about all of the above issues have been voiced at Dartmouth in response to Dean Johnson’s recent “proposals.” Needless to say, we can expect to see exactly the same outcomes in Hanover as in Hamilton. Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity springs to mind: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Addendum: One of my anonymous correspondents, who styles himself TheFakeJimKim — is that a redundancy? — opines that the Einstein quotation above is not to be attributed to the great man. A little more digging in Wikipedia shows that it has been erroneously attributed to Rita Mae Brown, and that it appeared in the “approval version” of the Narcotics Anonymous “Basic Text” released in November 1981.