Halfway through the first semester in which hard alcohol was
banned from residence halls and hall dances had to move to other
locations, the effects were obvious -- to the people taking out
the trash.
"The housekeepers have come to [the rectors] and said, 'The
trash has changed,'" said Father Mark Poorman, CSC, '80M.Div.
The vice president for student affairs was the architect of a
set of rule changes announced last spring aimed at curbing abusive
drinking on campus.
Poorman said he suspected students would try to evade the ban
on hard alcohol by simply drinking more discreetly, but reports
from the housekeeping staff suggest otherwise. The housekeepers
have told hall rectors they are seeing not only fewer bottles
of hard alcohol in the trash but fewer beer and wine containers
and less trash overall. Poorman and the rectors take this as a
sign that overall drinking and partying in the dorms has waned.
The vice president also was encouraged by an apparent decrease
in student drinking at tailgating parties on football Saturdays
and by a sharp decline in the number of students requiring medical
attention for excessive consumption of alcohol.
"It's way too early to declare victory," he said, "but so far
the implementation has gone very well."
When asked, upperclassmen generally agreed that binge-drinking
on campus was down and that there were fewer out-of-control room
parties fall semester. But many say drinking by students has not
necessarily decreased, it has only relocated to off-campus locations,
especially apartments of upperclassmen (which would explain the
dorm trash reductions).
Many also say the revised hall dances have lost much of their
former appeal and that hall camaraderie has suffered because so
many juniors and seniors are leaving the dorm on weekends, presumably
to attend rules-free parties off campus.
The trash evidence came to light after the first wave of hall-sponsored
dances last fall. In the past, many students -- especially freshmen
-- would bounce back and forth between a dance in the dorm's basement
or other social space and alcohol-soaked private parties in individual
rooms. The new rules require all hall-organized dances, often
called SYRs, to be held at a location outside the hall. And students
aren't allowed to leave the dance and re-enter.
Of the rules changes announced by Poorman last spring, evicting
SYRs from the dorms drew the loudest protests from students. And
plenty of unhappiness remains, especially among upperclassmen.
Some complain that the dances have too many rules and that a dance
with no other activity isn't enough to attract the level of participation
that existed in the past. Not everyone is comfortable dancing,
they say, especially for two or three hours in the same room.
One of the dances deemed most successful last fall was organized
by Fisher Hall and took place at the Beacon Bowl bowling lanes
near the airport. Supporters of the new policy said the dance
showed how imaginative thinking can lead to a successful social
event. Critics said it only proved their point; without the additional
entertainment of bowling, the dance would have flopped.
"Part of [the fun of hosting an SYR in the past] was inviting
people into your room and playing music," said Meghan Gowan, a
sophomore in Breen-Phillips Hall.
Abbey Coons, a resident assistant in Pasquerilla East, said
"things were more controlled" at her hall's first dance of the
year, hosted with the neighboring men's hall Knott in a tent next
to Knott. She said that before the dance, freshman were "disappointed"
and "disgruntled" because they felt robbed of enjoying true Notre
Dame social life, and upperclassmen did not expect to have fun.
The rectors of the two halls worried that students might drink
excessively out of spite or sulk during the event, Coons said.
But the R.A. said most people "had fun just the same," and she
predicted things would improve next time because people will know
what to expect.
Poorman was heartened by a column in The Observer written
by a freshman after one of the new-styled dances.
"Although there were a few small drawbacks to the new SYRs,"
wrote Mike Harkins of Dillon Hall, "it could not take away from
what was an awesome evening. The fact that we could go out and
dance for hours without needing a fake ID was all I could really
ask for."
"People who were accustomed to hall dances being enormous hallwide
parties are probably disappointed [with the new format]," the
student affairs vice president said. "People who actually want
a dance are pleased. That's exactly what we had in mind when we
made the changes."
The other target of the rules changes was excessive drinking
during football-morning tailgating. New rules permit students
21 and older to host tailgaters and to serve alcohol, provided
they register in advance, host the event in a designated area
(a field south of Edison Road) and don't serve to minors.
The volume of registered tailgaters was small for the first
few games -- about 30 each week, Poorman said -- and the consensus
among students was that the drinking had just moved to different
locations. Instead of campus parking lots, students said, they
were going to nearby apartment complexes and indulging in the
same drinking games and tipsy breakfast traditions like "kegs
and eggs" and "waffles and whiskey" as before. Others were reportedly
renting front yards on the streets east of campus to use as their
new base for drinking, away from the eyes of campus officials
and law enforcement personnel patrolling the parking lots.
Poorman countered that he'd heard only anecdotal evidence of
this, and he noted that law enforcement personnel were charged
with enforcing the drinking age everywhere, not just in the designated
lots. The priest said students seemed unwilling to consider that
abusive drinking may have actually dropped since the rule changes,
at least among certain populations.
"In terms of freshmen I think we're seeing some change in behavior
of what's happening on football Saturday mornings."
