Addressing the new alcohol policy

Beginning next year, RCAs will be asked to take a more active role when they observe significant violations of the University's existing alcohol policy. This change is focused solely on combating excessive and abusive use of alcohol.

Many aspects of the revised role of RCAs remain consistent with the current expectations, which are outlined in the 2006-07 RCA manual. This includes an existing requirement to contact Public Safety if a student's physical safety is in jeopardy.

The principal change is that, beginning next year, RCAs will be expected to take action when they observe significant violations of the University's alcohol policy. The alcohol policy itself has not changed, and significant violations continue to include making alcohol available to underage persons, students of any age participating in "pre-gaming" or drinking games in which large quantities are consumed in brief periods of time and hazing or initiations involving alcohol.

This enhanced level of responsibility for RCAs is not intended to disrupt the lives of individual students who might consume an alcoholic beverage in the privacy of their dorm rooms or to interfere with other activities that don't violate alcohol policies.

The redefined role of the RCAs is based in part on visits by our deans last year to other colleges and universities. The purpose of these visits was to learn more about how they address concerns about excessive and abusive use of alcohol in their dorms and to begin to identify a set of "best practices." The RCAs hold positions of responsibility for which they are compensated, and other campuses that have positions of this kind expect them to assist in enforcing their alcohol policies.

Some campuses have taken actions to clarify these roles only after there has been a student death or other tragedy related to alcohol abuse. We don't want to wait for such a tragedy on our campus before taking appropriate steps to increase the level of responsibility that we expect from our RCAs. We want to learn from the experiences of other places and take steps now, working together with students, residential college faculty and staff, and other administrators to more actively address concerns about excessive drinking on campus.

Likewise, the new patrols of the dorms by Public Safety are another tool to address excessive drinking and alcohol abuse. We have asked Public Safety to patrol in dormitories on Thursday and Saturday nights to be in a better position to observe situations that may be dangerous to individual students or the general safety of the dorms.

The guidelines officers will follow when they encounter situations that demand their attention have not changed. Regarding alcohol violations, officers will act no differently than if they found themselves in the dorm for a lockout and observed a violation of the University's alcohol policies or a student in distress.

The goal is to make officers more visible in the dorms at times that bear the highest risk of situations that jeopardize the safety of students so that they can act when they observe such situations and so that they can be readily called upon by students if they know that someone is in distress.

Masters of the residential colleges met last week with current RCAs to inform them of the change in their expected role so that RCAs would be aware of this increased responsibility when submitting applications for the coming year. For the most part, the masters have reported positive feedback thus far from the RCAs, and we will continue exploring how we can incorporate their suggestions for clarifying the new guidelines before they officially become part of the 2008-09 RCA manual.

The draft of the revised guidelines on the roles and responsibilities of RCAs for alcohol-related issues is available on the ODUS website for interested students who would like to read them. Kathleen Deignan is the Dean of Undergraduate Students. She can be reached at kdeignan@princeton.edu.