University revises RCA alcohol guidelines

Responding to criticism from students and RCAs, the University has revised its policy regarding the role of RCAs in addressing alcohol violations on campus, USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 announced today in an e-mail to the student body.

The guidelines were originally revised last November and had designated RCAs as “authority figures within the residential college community.” They instructed RCAs to break up parties and to immediately report situations involving intoxicated students or with the potential to disturb students.

The revised policy, however, places RCAs in a “support” capacity to reinforce and remind students of University policy.

Allowing more room for individual judgment and discretion, the new policy states that RCAs should contact Public Safety after making “every effort to intervene.”

In addition, the November version prohibited more than two six-packs of beer per room  while the new policy only admonishes against “a large quantity.” RCAs are also now only forbidden from providing alcohol to advisees who are underage, whereas the previous version had banned providing alcohol to any advisee.

“The original policy reminded RCAs a number of times of the option of calling Public Safety to curtail risky or disruptive alcohol-related situations,” Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Hilary Herbold said in an e-mail. “Some student [Undergraduate Life Committee] members expressed a concern that in so doing, the policy might prompt RCAs to call Public Safety even in situations where an RCA might be able to curb problematic alcohol-related behavior himself or herself.”

The new policy specifies that Public Safety is a “last resort in case of a party or things getting out of hand,” Weinstein explained. “The policy is really intended to make the RCAs the one[s] doing the oversight, not Public Safety. And based on the [Alcohol Coalition Committee] workshops, students are very receptive to the idea of students looking out for students.”

The RCAs’ role under the new policy is “a little more palatable to students and yet an effective means of enforcement,” Wilson RCA Nic Byrd ’08 said. The new policy has the same purpose as the previous versions, he said, but clarifies many previously gray areas, such as the RCA’s ability to determine whether the amount of beer in a room is inappropriate.

For Wilson RCA Cam Lloyd ’09, the previous revision to the policy was not particularly significant.

“I really didn’t mind, because it wasn’t really a big deal to me,” he explained. “It doesn’t seem too drastic.” The new revisions, therefore, will not change the way he interacts with his advisees, he said.

Some underclassmen, however, praised the opportunity for more constructive and beneficial relationships between RCAs and their advisees than those that could have been brought about by the intial proposed policy.

“It sounds a lot better than putting the RCAs in a kind of sticky position to obligate them to turn in an underage party and get them in trouble when they don’t really want to,” Andres Perez ’10 said. “It’s still a lot of oversight, but it’s definitely better than what [the administration] proposed earlier.”

After all, it is not the role of RCAs to inform Public Safety every time an incident arises, Dan Maselli ’11 said.

“We’re supposed to be getting people [to be RCAs who are] responsible enough to take care of these sorts of issues themselves,” he said.

Praveen Murthy ’10 said, though, that the new policy, while an improvement over the one announced in November, will still be ineffective in preventing alcohol-related issues.

“Are they really getting at root of the problem which is alcohol abuse?” Murthy said. “[Enforcement] by Public Safety has gotten out of control.”

One student suggestion that was not implemented concerned the policy’s prohibition against RCAs providing eating club passes to their advisees.

“We have not implemented specific changes to that policy,” Herbold explained, “because we want first to discuss the pros and cons of the policy with the RCAs themselves, which we are currently in the process of doing.”

Weinstein hailed the revisions, though, as examples of positive mediation between student concerns and administrative policies.

After the RCA alcohol policy was announced in November, many students expressed concern over the lack of student input.

“The central administration has a tendency to make decisions and then tell us about it,” Lloyd said. He didn’t consider the policy too drastic, “but they really didn’t ask us what the RCAs thought,” he said.

This resulted in a “misunderstanding” between students and the administration, Weinstein said. “The administration got the wrong idea that we were attacking the policy when we just wanted some revisions,” Weinstein explained.

He said that Herbold, though, was “very receptive” to the changes proposed by the USG. “It sets a great precedent for student-administrator interaction.”

 

— Staff writers Esther Breger, Paige Kestenman and Sarabeth Sanders contributed reporting