Since the presidents of Cottage Club, Cloister Inn and Tiger Inn were charged last month with serving alcohol to a minor and maintaining a nuisance, the campus has hummed with speculation about the Borough's motives for what many saw as an unprecedented crackdown on the Street.
But the Borough has a long history of taking aim at underage alcohol use on Prospect Avenue through the legal system, and local officials described the latest round of charges as nothing new. Borough Councilman Roger Martindell, a council member since 1989, calls it "an educative process" to teach University students about drinking laws. "We embark on it each year to educate a new body of undergraduates."
The charges leveled by the Borough against club presidents Savannah Sachs of Cloister, Vince Ley of Cottage and Chris Merrick of TI, all of whom are seniors, come on the heels of similar charges filed last spring against Colonial Club president Tommy Curry '08.
When the Colonial case went to court, the charges against Curry were dropped and transferred to the club's membership as a whole in a deal arranged by the club's graduate board and Borough Prosecutor Kim Otis. The club has restricted the serving of alcohol to students of legal drinking age and agreed to perform 500 hours of community service.
Though this most recent spate of charges against club presidents seems daunting to students who see it as part of the University and Borough's ongoing campaign against the Street, it's part of a cycle that has gone on for decades. An underage drinking incident at an eating club results in charges against the club, which are most likely dropped with a slap on the wrist and an agreement curtailing the availability of alcohol to underage students for a few weeks or months.
Eventually, there is another drinking incident at the Street and the cycle begins again.
The current cases against the Cloister, Cottage and TI presidents are in the pretrial phase, during which the Borough will decide whether or not to pursue charges against the three presidents, Otis said. A hearing scheduled for yesterday in Municipal Court was postponed until later this month.
"The cases have problems because of recanting by witnesses, because two of them said they did and then said that they didn't drink at the clubs," Otis said. "This is certainly going to have an impact on how this matter proceeds."
In these cases, Otis said he is striving for an outcome similar to the one in last spring's Colonial case. This approach suggests a shift in Borough policy regarding the clubs. "It's always my intention now to move the responsibility to the club itself as an institution," he said, "because I don't believe there is any impact or deterrent effect that has any longstanding impact in charging or convicting the senior presidents of these clubs."
Prospect Avenue's reaction
Though Martindell called the cycle "educative," club officers and trustees don't see the Borough's periodic crackdowns as successfully curbing underage drinking.
Interclub Council (ICC) and Charter Club president Will Scharf '08 said in an email that "[i]f Councilman Martindell is suggesting that the Borough will charge eating club presidents each year, regardless of whether or not the clubs are doing anything illegal, that would seem to be a radical departure from normative legal practice as well as from basic principles of fairness,."
Cloister graduate board president Mike Jackman '92 said he "would welcome a dialogue with the councilman and other interested parties" about how to effectively educate students about underage drinking without "subject[ing] innocent students such as Savannah Sachs to the personal stress and tarnishing of her name that she has endured over the past month" since the Borough filed its charges against her.
While serious legal penalties are unlikely, club presidents say they are not taking any chances after the recent round of charges. "We all wristband and check wristbands," Scharf said in an earlier email. "People who say that 'everyone in the taproom gets drinks' are living in 2005. We've definitely moved beyond that point."
Previous prosecutions
Though the clubs may have been surprised by the charges filed against Sachs, Merrick and Ley, the Borough has a long history of prosecuting club officers for alcohol violations.
Borough police conducted undercover operations at the Street in fall 2002, filing charges of serving alcohol to a minor and maintaining a nuisance against the presidents of Colonial and Quadrangle Club. Cap & Gown Club president Matthew Groh '03 was also charged with serving alcohol to a minor.
In March 2003, those three clubs reached an agreement with the Borough in which the three clubs would enforce stricter controls on underage drinking in return for the temporary suspension of the charges.
Similarly, in 2004, Cap president Elizabeth Biney-Amissah '04 was charged with maintaining a nuisance and serving alcohol to a minor following an incident in which a student was hospitalized. Those charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence.
The Borough renewed its legal efforts in 2006, when charges were filed against Terrace Club president Patti Chao '07. They were later transferred to the club's graduate board, which pled guilty to charges of serving alcohol to a minor and paid a fine of $664.
"We decided to recognize that it's not fair for one person to take all the heat, and we would sway with the Borough and we would pay the fine," David Willard '60, Terrace's graduate board chair, said.
Charges against club presidents go back even further. In March 1988, charges of serving alcohol to a minor were filed against the presidents and social chairs of Charter and Cloister and charges of maintaining a nuisance were filed against the two clubs as a whole.
Though Charter president Ken Simpler '89 and social chair Lisa Napolitano '89 were initially sentenced to 30 days in a state penitentiary, they instead received nine months of probation, completed around 60 hours of community service coordinated by the McCosh Health Center and paid a $500 fine.
The initial sentence, which was the harshest allowed under state law, "startled courtroom observers and sent shock waves through the University community," The Daily Princetonian reported on Sept. 15, 1988.
The charges were filed after excessive drinking during that year's sign-in week which led to 39 students being held overnight at the University infirmary and seven more being sent to the University Medical Center at Princeton, then called Princeton Medical Center.
The hospitalizations, coupled with the alcohol-related death of a Rutgers fraternity pledge that February — a case eerily similar to the drinking death last spring of Rider University freshman Gary DeVercelly — focused national attention on college drinking. New Jersey undertook a statewide investigation of drinking at colleges and universities, and The New York Times published a strongly worded editorial titled "Drinking Themselves to Death."
The legal process
Though the outcomes of the three current cases are still pending, precedent for drinking cases involving the clubs suggests that Sachs, Ley, Merrick and their clubs will not face harsh punishment.
As a matter of course, charges of serving alcohol to a minor and maintaining a public nuisance are initially brought against the president of a club. But the latter, more serious charge — which can result in a location being closed to the public for up to a year — has in the past been dropped once a deal is made on the underage drinking charges.
In most past cases, club graduate boards have responsibility for the drinking charges. After agreeing to pay a fine, the club restricts its access to alcohol for a limited period of time and may restrict entrance to the club to members only. As memory of the incident fades, the doors are reopened, and Beast once again flows freely.
This has been the pattern, with certain exceptions, such as the recent Colonial case, for Borough actions against the eating clubs in the last two decades.
The Borough seems to use the maintaining a nuisance charge — a common law concept which was historically employed to prosecute institutions of gambling or prostitution — more as a warning tactic than with a serious intent of conviction.
"To show a public nuisance, you need to show that there's a pattern of disregarding the rights of others," Borough attorney Bill Potter '68 said after the three charges were filed this month, adding that it seems like a "gross overreaction" to the current cases.
State law says that a person is guilty of maintaining a nuisance when he or she "knowingly or recklessly creates or maintains a condition which endangers the safety or health of a considerable number of persons."
Underage drinking policy
Though last month's charges fit the mold of past charges against the club, they come at a time of increased nationwide scrutiny of alcohol abuse on college campuses.
Underage and binge drinking deaths and crimes have abounded in recent years, making breaking news headlines and inspiring deeper investigation by reporters and law enforcement officials.
The drinking death at Rider earlier this year led to the indictment of two Rider administrators and three students on charges of aggravated hazing related to the death. The charges against the administrators were quickly dropped, and Rider implemented a stringent new campus alcohol policy.
Drinking deaths elsewhere have also spurred reforms on those campuses and inspired other institutions to reconsider their drinking policies, too.
The University is in the midst of reviewing its alcohol policies. "What we're doing is taking steps for the facilities for which we have responsibility, which aren't the clubs," University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said. "If there are steps we can take to address the concerns about excessive alcohol abuse ... we will take them."
Though the University will not get involved in the legal dispute between the Borough and the clubs, it maintains a working relationship with the clubs.
"Abusive/binge drinking is a complex, multifaceted problem," said Maria Flores-Mills, an associate dean of undergraduate students who also serves as a liaison between the University and the clubs. "Obviously, it is not one that is easily addressed because if anyone had the answer we would have had that information long ago," she wrote in an email.
She said she supports the Borough's efforts to curb alcohol abuse on the Street, adding that she thinks it could help stop the cycle of underage and binge drinking on campus.
"A multi-prong approach makes sense and I do believe that enforcement and consequences (whether disciplinary or legal) have a place within that plan if it is thought through carefully and consistently applied," she added.
— Princetonian staff writers Kate Benner, Esther Breger, Mendy Fisch and Brian No contributed reporting to this article.
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