USG distributes alcohol cards

The USG printed roughly 10,000 of these cards, USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian, noting that this was enough to give one to every current undergraduate as well as every member of the next five incoming freshman classes. The cards were written “in conjunction with lawyers, public safety officers and other University officials,” Diemand-Yauman added.

“Interacting with the Borough or Public Safety can be a stressful, uncomfortable experience, especially if you don’t know the rules,” said Diemand-Yauman, who was charged last September with serving alcohol to a minor after he called Public Safety to help a drunk friend. He added that he hoped “every student will carry this card wherever they go, ensuring that if such a situation were to arise, they’d have a resource that they could rely on.”

But Catalina Hwang ’12 said she didn’t think the cards were “being taken very seriously.” It was unlikely, she added, that students would carry the cards with them since she saw many of them “lying around in the galleries of Frist right now.”

Mark Stevens ’13 said of his card, “We’ve gotten so much stuff recently that this little thing probably will get lost,” noting, “You start to get tired of talking about [alcohol].”

Stevens added, though, that the information on the card put a “different perspective” on what he had been told previously about alcohol on campus. He, along with Kevin Henneck ’13, mentioned he had recently completed an online course, mandatory for incoming University freshmen, from the alcohol-education site AlcoholEdu.

Yet the inclusion of some of the statements that appeared on the card surprised students. In addition to listing Public Safety’s emergency number and various symptoms of alcohol poisoning, the card features a section titled “Interactions with Police Officers” that notes, “Officers may lie to and pressure you.”

“I didn’t know police officers could lie to you,” said Krishnan Mody ’11, adding that though he would probably leave the card on his desk, he thought it was a “good summary” of useful information.

Diemand-Yauman said in an e-mail to the student body that he hopes the cards will “level the playing field and give students a feeling of confidence in times of insecurity and uncertainty.”

“When students encounter Borough or Public Safety officers, we want them to be equipped with as much information as possible so they know what options are available to them,” he told The Daily Princetonian last April.

But Henneck noted that “if [he] were drunk, referring to the card wouldn’t help.” He added, however, that he did think it was important to publicize the information contained on the card.

Hwang called the card “useful,” but also said “the people who need it probably won’t be thinking about the information when they are drinking.”

Diemand-Yauman said the initiative came out of the USG’s attempts to address the conflicting alcohol amnesty policies of the University and the Borough, adding that the USG will continue to work with administrators and Borough officials to “advocate for more effective, logical alcohol policy.”