Beast(s) at Princeton

If, Virginia, you believed what you read in the 'Prince,' you'd think the undergrads here were animals.

On March 26, Cullen Newton praised Prospect Avenue's safety record. Shaking his finger at the Borough's efforts to curtail drinking at the clubs, he contrasted the "safe" Prospect clubs with the "especially dangerous" drinking environment of students' dorms. In the next issue, Jonathan Eastvold GS kicked over an anthill when he pointed out that clubs often serve hard alcohol (mine does, weekly), contradicting Newton's assertion that there was "no hard alcohol available in the clubs," and speculated that it was only a matter of time before someone died of alcohol poisoning. Adam Kopald '05 and perennial Prospect apologist Zachary Goldstein '05 pounced on the letter, firing sarcastic barbs at Eastvold in particular and at "sketchy grad students," ignorant of club practices, in general drawing Kopald's ire.

Everybody, from Newton onward, missed the point. If the only reason that students aren't expiring due to alcohol poisoning is that they're partying at the Street, where the hardest beverage available in most clubs is watered-down Budweiser, rather than drinking the hard stuff in their dorm rooms, then Princeton's problems are a bit deeper than the availability of in-room alcohol.

If Newton is correct, then there must exist a gang of animalistic (by night, at least) students for whom the only factor limiting their drinking is the amount of alcohol within their reach. I assume these are the people who vomit in entryways, urinate on buildings, pass out on lawns, and show up red-eyed, taciturn, and late for class the following day. They must be the people who get carried home, get McCoshed, get PMC-ed. They're presumably the people whose drunken-binge stories appear on the "real_life@princeton" posters. And I am certain that Newton is right — it is far safer for these bestial people to drink Beast in a taproom than J.D. in a bedroom.

But if there are enough of these people to provide regular fodder for Prince editorialists, enough of these people to necessitate the "real_life" responsible-drinking campaign, enough of these people to be an ongoing hobbyhorse of the Borough police and the Borough Council, then perhaps the problem is not that these irresponsible drinkers have access to alcohol. Rather, the problem is that the University has so many students who turn bestial around alcohol to begin with.

Consider the irony: Princeton has, since 1893, trusted its undergraduates not merely to refrain from cheating on their exams, but to report any colleagues whom they observe to be cheating. Are academic and personal responsibility really so distinct that we undergraduates can expect each other to faithfully refrain from and report incidents of cheating, but to turn such a blind eye to each other's drinking habits that students regularly land in McCosh or PMC? Can we expect students to be beasts on the Street but still balanced in the examination room?

Newton's implicit assumption that many students have so little self-control that their only check against drinking themselves to death is the unavailability of hard alcohol is completely at odds with a University atmosphere that prides itself on its self-policing. At Princeton, the proctors aren't patrolling exam rooms. They're watching for open containers and confiscating kegs and taps.

Each club employs its own childproofing measures: Each minimizes the amount of hard alcohol available, each provides officers to supervise the Bacchanalia, each does its best to make sure that if people are going to get falling-down drunk, they do so in another club.

This is, as Newton puts it, the safest "college party environment in the United States."

He's probably right — and therein lies the problem.

The Street's supervisors are building a "safe" environment around unsafe students, rather than cultivating students disposed responsible drinking. This is the manner in which one architects an environment for children, prisoners, the deranged and captive beasts. Why are Princeton's clubs doing so for the country's student elite?

It is only in the topsy-turvy world of Prospect Avenue that purveyors of watered-down beer and cochlea-crushing music, facilitators of drunken hookups and entryway vomiting, can truthfully claim to be acting in the students' interests.

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But it is perhaps not the club presidents' fault that they have to act as zookeepers. Perhaps their exhortations to responsible drinking are falling on deaf ears. If an increasing number of students are irrational beasts in need of a 'safe environment,' rather than rational people capable of controlling their alcohol intake regardless of their surroundings, then perhaps West College's filters could stand a bit of retooling. Joseph Barillari is a computer science major from North Canton, Ohio. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays. He can be reached at jbarilla@princeton.edu.