Alumni recall lax booze rules

As students debated over the weekend the stricter enforcement policies that the University announced to RCAs last week, alumni reminisced about longer leashes and laxer rules regarding drinking during their times at Princeton.

"When I was at Princeton, there were kegs everywhere. You never heard about the University really interfering with drinking," June Balish '83 said. "Think about the open drinking that you see during Reunions. That probably reflects what it was like for undergraduates."

Alumni interviewed for the article were unanimous in their assessment that the University has become much more zealous about alcohol regulation since they left campus but expressed mixed views on the recent tightening of policies enforcing alcohol violations.

"I doubt that it's actually gotten safer, because when things are forbidden, they tend to be highly attractive," Balish said. "It seems like more people are getting sick from alcohol."

Janet Toledano '74 echoed similar concerns. "Alcohol wasn't forbidden fruit," she said. "It wasn't like you had to go out and get drunk because that's your only opportunity."

"There was a lot of beer," she said. "I don't remember the University doing anything or saying anything about it."

Balish noted that what she called "rampant" public consumption of alcohol might have been due to the lower drinking age, which was 18 at the time. In the University's wetter, headier days, there was a pub in Chancellor Green.

"That was the pub on campus," Arlene Pedovitch '80 said. "Pretty much all social life was on the Street, and the pub was where you would go if you wanted a non-Street location."

Pedovitch was more optimistic about the revised alcohol policy; she acknowledged the potentially negative effects of the higher drinking age — such as making drinking more of an underground activity — but supported the changes.

"The University certainly can't change the drinking age, so my personal view is that something needed to be done. And hopefully this is a step in the right direction," she said.

Jeffrey Herbst '83, who is now the provost of Miami University in Ohio, said that he is also struggling with how to deal with campus drinking.

"A lot of things have changed because of the drinking age ... It's driven some drinking private, which is unfortunate," he said.

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Herbst has been tightening the alcohol policy at Miami over the past few years.

"I don't think we have the same policy with residential advisers," he said, referring to Princeton's revised policy stating that RCAs must enforce drinking rules under certain circumstances. "But our policy is in evolution," he added. "We prohibited alcohol deliveries to campus this year."

Toledano attributed the University's stricter rules to tougher alcohol regulation by the government.

"I always thought it was strange that the government took away the right to drink," she added. "Because when you're 18, you can vote, you can do anything else, but you can't drink."

Though Toledano remained skeptical of the higher drinking age, she said her two children, Anna '11 and Alex '04, still manage to have fun in college.

"From what I hear from them, they are still having fun, for some reason."