This academic year, the Administration at Elon University will institute new enforcement and penalties of the Elon Alcohol regulations, including heightened citation fines and parent notification for first offenses.

The new alcohol regulations are much stronger, and more daunting. New students are required to undergo a much more rigorous alcohol education program. This is bound to be an unpopular policy in the eyes of many new and returning students.

Despite the legal drinking age being 21, many students at U.S. colleges and universities engage in drinking, both legal and underage. Underage drinking is not simply endemic to one school or another, but is a large scale event, common in almost all colleges and universities. A student from Elon visiting another university is likely to find the exact same behavior.

The administration has its work cut out for it. Many students at Elon have scoffed and ridiculed the administrations statistics about Elon’s drinking behavior as both unrealistic and possibly false. These statistics seem incredibly low, passed off as wishful thinking. The enforcement of the alcohol regulations is ad hoc and arbitrary.

Residence Life officials, both faculty members and students, usually are either extremely lax in their enforcement or extraordinarily draconian. Some students received a citation through mail for a violation they were not present at.

Many more simply incidents are not cited. Furthermore, few RA’s abstain from drinking themselves. A student receiving their first alcohol violation was rarely viewed as a departure from the norm because the fine was relatively small. That student simply learned how to avoid getting caught. Rather than teaching abstinence from alcohol, students were taught to act responsibly, to know what they were drinking and to know when too much was just that.

However, the problem that the administration has realized is that students are not acting responsibly. The culture of alcohol consumption, especially underage alcohol consumption, is extremely widespread at Elon, as it is at almost every other American college and university. Students are drinking to excess often, and a few are learning the consequences.

Last year, as mentioned in President Leo Lambert’s letter, a student was paralyzed from the chest down after a fight at a party and several were suspended from the university for alcohol violations. Students commonly receive e-mails from Smith Jackson, vice president and dean of student life, about female student’s being attacked walking home from parties alone.

Elon is a school excelling and growing at a phenomenal speed. We are growing at an exponential rate, bringing in a population of students who are both highly qualified, and more intelligent. It is ridiculous that our reputation is marred by this consistent irresponsibility. It was our job to act with restraint and responsibility, and in the absence of that restraint, the university has taken up that responsibility.

No matter how we may feel about the legal age of consumption, the fact is that it is illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 21 and we put ourselves at risk when we drink underage. Most of students are willing to chance the consequences. However, many are taking too many risks. Some students are drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning, while others have become intoxicated to the point of belligerency and violence.

There is a culture that needs to be overcome for the administration to be successful with these new regulations. Many upperclassmen have been drinking for most, if not all, of their college career. Many incoming freshmen are likely to have participated in underage alcohol consumption as high school students.

Students drink because they want to, whether the reasons are social, to feel less inhibited (which may be dangerous in and of itself), or for the simple outcome of intoxication.

If students will not protect themselves, the administration must do it for them. It no longer matters if underage consumption is a national problem or not. Whether the university will be successful is determined by how willing the student population is willing to cooperate, and how far the administration is willing to go in enacting their new policies.

While these policies may be distasteful to some students, the university still see’s a problem hurting the academic advancement of the student population at large. Administration is attempting to correct this issue. Perhaps if students exercise more responsibility for ourselves, the university will not act on our behalves.

Opinion Editor: Bryan Ray - 08/24/07