Alcohol Coalition Committee stresses student input

Around 80 members of the University community attended the four-hour workshop to discuss why and how to create a healthier drinking culture on campus. The workshop marked the first in a series of three workshops intended to address different aspects of high-risk drinking. The latter two will occur Feb. 22 and 29.

The ACC, formed in fall 2007, will use the ideas generated by these workshops in its upcoming strategic plan to address alcohol consumption on campus.

“The one thing that is most important is to get students involved,” said Sanjeev Kulkarni, Butler College master and co-chair of the Coalition.

“Stakeholder” meetings will also be held with 30 groups, including the Religious Life Council, Public Safety and the Interclub Council to discuss how alcohol use affects each of these groups.

The opening speaker for the workshop, Mike Lemonick, an astrophysics lecturer, said, “The question is, what do we do about [high-risk drinking]? The answer is we don’t know. If we knew, we wouldn’t be having this conference.”

High-risk drinking was not defined as a particular amount of alcohol; rather, it meant any drinking that had dangerous consequences.

The bulk of the meeting was two small group sessions. There were eight topics ranging from alcohol as a social lubricant, the relationship between alcohol and sex, and the impression that alcohol consumption is omnipresent on campus, to alcohol abuse within Princeton’s Orange Bubble. Participants chose which groups to attend, which made for occasionally lopsided groups, and some had far more staff than student participants.

Within the sessions, the groups discussed potential solutions to the issues raised. Attendees often illustrated answers with personal experiences. Each group chose several of its best points, which were later presented to the entire workshop.

Areas of discussion included the social and academic pressures that may contribute to overuse of alcohol.

Several students, including USG president Josh Weinstein ’09, noted problems with the relationship between Public Safety and students.

Some members of the audience addressed the lack of University-specific data about alcohol use and voiced concerns about not knowing exactly how deep the roots of the problem extend through campus.

“If the University administration is serious about addressing [high-risk drinking], we need to address the cause,” workshop participant and psychologist Jim Floyd ’69 said after the workshop. “These issues have existed for decades ... the only way to seriously address them [is] to address the deeper culture in the institution that supports the problem drinking.” Floyd is also a Mathey Fellow and a former member of the Tower Club Graduate Board.

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Staff members at the workshop noted the need for an educational model to deter alcohol overuse. Several proposed replacing alcohol.edu — an online alcohol-education course students complete before entering college — with a University-specific version. When addressing the issue of education, however, several staff members noted the difficulty of educating without being seen as breaking the laws regarding underage drinking.

Kathryn Bailey ’10, a representative of the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, said the event provided “a lot of really good ideas. I feel like everyone there was of a very similar mindset [of why high-risk drinking needs to be addressed].”

“It’s a matter of getting that mindset out of the room and around campus,” she added.