USG backs party registration

Students have been required to register parties with 15 or more guests who are over 21 for years, but the registration mechanism was only established after a proposal by the Alcohol Coalition Committee in April. Paid graduate students would check up on registered parties to make sure that no one underage was in attendance and that the host is looking out for the wellbeing of all guests.

The USG website states that the party-checkers “have no disciplinary role.”

“The Party Registration system is an opportunity for students to demonstrate that we are responsible enough to monitor our own parties … that we don’t need Public Safety patrolling our halls and knocking on our doors to make sure that no one is getting sick or breaking things,” U-Councilor Harry Schiff ’10, who is also on the Alcohol Policy/Public Safety Relations Working Group, said in an e-mail.

Schiff added that party registration “is an opportunity to remind everyone, including ourselves, that we are adults.”

“With the current rules, if students don’t register parties with 15 people or more in attendance, they are violating University policy,” Diemand-Yauman said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian. “This could lead to consequences down the line if their party is broken up by Public Safety, even for something as benign as a noise complaint.”

Diemand-Yauman explained that the USG hoped that if the current party registration system can be proven practical, the USG “will more easily be able to make our case that mixed-age parties can be safe, legal and responsible.”

Schiff said he hopes the USG’s incentive will encourage some students to register their parties, though he doesn’t expect an immediate change in campus culture.

“Look, no one expects ODUS to be overwhelmed by a flood of people rushing to register their 21+ party,” Schiff said. “Some 65 percent of the students here are 18, 19 and 20; everybody gets that.”

Schiff said the USG hopes to show that “we don’t need Public Safety patrolling our halls and knocking on our doors to make sure that no one is getting sick or breaking things.”

“If a few groups of juniors and seniors register some parties and keep their guests in good health and out of trouble, we can start to change the way people think about students,” he explained.

Course readings and sustainability

Diemand-Yauman’s e-mail also addressed “the Pequod monopoly” over required course packets and introduced a new interactive sustainability survey and pledge.

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He encouraged the student body to “push … professors to make their course readings available on E-Reserves to help alleviate the financial burden on students.”

“The USG is working with the administration to encourage faculty to make all classroom readings available online,” Diemand-Yauman added in an e-mail to the ‘Prince.’

Diemand-Yauman said that members of the Undergraduate Life Committee (ULC) also researched the possibility of introducing new competition to drive down the cost of the course packets.

“While we did meet with several competitors, none were overly enthusiastic about joining the competition, namely because the margins on these coursebooks aren’t very high (when priced properly),” Arthur Levy ’10, the outgoing chair of the ULC, said in an e-mail. “They did confidently tell us that they believed we were being overcharged by [P]equod, however.”

The sustainability pledge is an online survey asking students about their current behavior and new pledges on 25 sustainable behaviors, such as using reusable bottles and going “tray-free” in dining halls.

Julia Kaplan ’11, a U-Council executive committee representative, said the USG worked with Greening Princeton, the Office of Sustainability and several other student groups on the initiative.

The survey accompanying the pledge contains a list of questions about students’ daily activities, with a short summary of the environmental impact of each activity listed below each question.

To increase interest in the survey, the USG has offered free T-shirts to the first 50 students who complete the survey.

“Regardless of how sustainable students want to be, they can’t reduce their carbon footprint without first knowing how to do so," Diemand-Yauman told the 'Prince.' "Our pledge is intended to give students this information.”