Dartblog

Ten (10!) Dartmouth administrators made the trip to Washington, D.C. for the third meeting of Jim Kim’s Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking. JYK even showed up for the first evening. IP Folt, in her special way with the English language, asked the attendees “to create new ideas and implement transformative interventions.”

Well, it seems that a couple of new transformative interventions are coming down the pike. In the minutes of the recent GLOS advisors’ meeting, details of pre-rush training were laid out:

Mandatory safety and education sessions for all registered new members: There will be 12 mandatory pre-recruitment sessions and all interested students will need to attend one of the sessions before they may participate in recruitment. Wes and Sam will run all the sessions. They are held from 1 to 15 September at various times in the day and evening, including 3 on Saturday so there is plenty of opportunity for everyone to attend. Individuals need to make sure that they have attended a session but chapters may also encourage students who are interested in their house to attend the sessions

At the Collaborative, which will hold its last conference — to be called a “Congress” — in July, a participating university described the positive effects of sending letters to students’ parents prior to big weekends (referred to as “typical high-risk drinking periods”). The missives asked parents to converse with their son or daughter about “high-risk drinking prevention.” This school found a a 30-40% decrease in reported binge drinking by women whose parents received the letter, though the exact source of this statistic was not provided.

Will admonitory letters make a difference? I don’t see how. Helicopter parenting is enough of a problem today without the College encouraging parents to monitor their children’s daily behavior. And frankly, what parents aren’t yet aware that student drinking is a serious issue?

If the Trustees and senior administrators want to effect real change at the College, little meetings and letters to the ‘rents aren’t going to get the job done. Real structural change is needed at Dartmouth, as we have opined in detail in the past.