A tale of two campuses

Consider the following scenario: Two universities exist in close proximity to one another in the suburbs. Both are private institutions with about 5,000 students studying a variety of subjects. Students at both universities abuse alcohol and drugs, but students at University B are much more likely than their counterparts across town to abuse hard drugs, like heroin, or to drink hard liquor exclusively and excessively. While these are occasionally used at University A, those students generally drink beer because it is widely available, and the overwhelming majority of drug violations are marijuana-related.

In addition, a centralized off-campus party zone ensures that students at University A are doing their drinking in public with the nearby town cops desperate for an excuse to break up the revelry. The students are surrounded by friends with at least two or three upperclassmen designated to be sober every night; University B's scene is much more decentralized. Health professionals working for University A almost unanimously agree that "pre-gaming" and smaller room parties, not the huge parties held in off-campus mansions, are the primary threat to their students' health. Finally, two students at University B have died within the past seven months from either alcohol poisoning or drug overdose while none has ever perished at University A.

In a sane world, law enforcement officials would be far more interested in taking proactive measures against Rider than against Princeton. But of course, we don't live in a sane world. This helps explain why the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office launch a legal crusade and media barrage when three underage people get a little too drunk at Princeton but wait until after people die to do anything about drinking and drug use at Rider.

The disparities are even more striking when one looks deeper. Though I can't speak for each of the three separate incidents that led to charges against Cloister Inn, Tiger Inn and Cottage Club, I can say that at least one set of charges is based on shockingly little. A single student was taken by Public Safety to McCosh where her BAC was determined to be about a third of what Gary DeVercelly's was when he died in March at a Rider frat party. The student told Public Safety that she had been drinking and had been in one of the clubs. When she was interviewed by the Borough Police, she specifically stated that she hadn't actually had anything to drink at the Street and had only pre-gamed, but that she may have given the opposite impression because she was drunk at the time.

That is the grand total of all the evidence revealed to one of the defendants and was the sole basis for the criminal charges. In other words, a Princeton senior was charged with a serious crime because of contradictory statements made by a girl who, prior to charges being filed, had retracted the statement attributed to her. That makes it impossible for anyone to prove in a court of law that she was served by a specific club because the prosecutor would have to impeach his only witness in order to prove his case.

I'm not going to pretend that underage students don't drink at Princeton. In fact, it would be almost impossible to claim otherwise. But in our system of criminal justice, prosecutors aren't able to convict someone just because everyone "knows" they're probably guilty in general. You need specific evidence to prove a particular breach of the law beyond a reasonable doubt in order to win a conviction. And in this case that specific evidence simply does not seem to exist.

It's time for everyone to stop pretending otherwise. While the prosecutor's office has a right to publicize high-profile arrests within limits, it also has a responsibility not to threaten people through the press. All the rhetoric about closing down the clubs does nothing to advance the cause of justice and does much to poison town-gown and police-club relations. The media, including this paper, also needs to look much more carefully at the statements of law enforcement officials who have a vested interest in appearing tough on crime. The University needs to start standing up for students who are charged with crimes based on ambiguous evidence collected by the University itself. And everyone needs to start focusing on how to prevent truly dangerous drinking, not the consumption of Beast. Barry Caro is a history major from White Plains, N.Y. He is also a Cloister Inn officer. He may be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.