Banning Hard Alcohol Will Not Change Campus Culture

Last week, Dartmouth College announced that it will ban hard alcohol from its campus in an effort to stop dangerous partying and combat the school’s problems with sexual assault. Fraternities are a particular target of this and other policy changes. As Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon explained, “Greek organizations . . . will be held to much higher standards and a far greater level of accountability than they have been before.” Dartmouth’s efforts to crack down on its notorious fraternity scene show a strong commitment towards reform;  banning hard alcohol, however, will not be an effective policy. Instead, Dartmouth should focus on educational policies, like its new, laudable four-year sexual assault prevention program, to create a continued campus dialogue on alcohol and related issues.

The connection between intoxication and sexual violence is well-established, as is the relationship between sexual violence and social organizations that depend upon skewed gender dynamics. As The Dartmouth has reported, nearly 57% of current undergraduates believe there is a positive correlation between Greek life and cases of sexual assault. And just over a year ago, the Department of Education investigated a civil rights complaint that claimed Dartmouth was not properly responding to instances of sexual violence. In light of this context, then, the educational program proposed by President Hanlon is commendable as a direct and serious response to an ongoing problem..

Yet as Casey Dennis, Dartmouth’s student body president, has said, the ban on hard alcohol will be difficult to implement successfully because “hard alcohol is usually kept in private places.” The administration may instead inadvertently drive such drinking underground, making the culture of consumption even more dangerous. Students may choose to drink in their dorms or other non-public locations, where their actions will be harder to monitor. As the editorial staff of The Dartmouth explained themselves: “If students want to get dangerously drunk, they will find a way to do so. Rhetoric about eliminating the epidemic of binge drinking is neither realistic nor helpful.”

Moreover, at least nine schools have similar bans, but many have found that there has been little meaningful change as far as alcohol-related hospitalizations. At Bates College, for example, where a ban has been in place since 2001, 44 students were still hospitalized for alcohol poisoning in 2010.

Instead of its proposed ban, Dartmouth and other universities hoping to combat issues of sexual violence and its relation to alcohol should look towards a policy of education. The  four-year program of sexual assault prevention education introduced alongside the hard alcohol ban, is an example of one such solution. Aiming to be a comprehensive and mandatory education program for all students, this program represents the best of Dartmouth’s policy changes.

As universities across the country work towards creating policies to eliminate sexual assault on college campuses, they must remember that blanket prohibitions of the kind announced by Dartmouth are rarely effective. More concerted efforts at education remains the most promising way to address alcohol abuse on college campuses.