A Toast to Futility

When it comes to alcohol policy, university officials (and law enforcement, for that matter) across the country generally fall into two camps: pragmatists and puritans. Pragmatists believe that resistance to student alcohol consumption is futile. College students are bound to drink no matter how high the penalties—better to do what you can to promote responsible drinking habits and provide safe environments for students to drink. Puritans, in contrast, take a dimmer view of underage alcohol consumption. The law says underage students shouldn’t touch fire water, and those who do will get burned.

While it’s debatable which approach yields better results, it’s pretty clear which tradition Harvard and its environs has embraced. The Puritans landed in Massachusetts centuries ago, and their influence will still be with us during this November’s Harvard-Yale game. The Boston police have announced that alcohol laws will be more stringently enforced at this year’s matchup. Students may be carded at tailgate parties, which, if things don’t change soon, will once more be sans kegs. Football fans won’t be able to carry more than a six-pack of beer across the river into Allston. And House Committees (HoCos) and other organizations planning large tailgates will have to obtain special licenses to transport their intoxicants over the bridge.

Yale will doubtless lose once again on the playing field, but will any Yalies bother to make the 4-hour drive if the College and the city prevent them from drowning their sorrows in 18-ounce Solo cups filled with delicious Sam Adams?

We think not. In trying to more rigorously enforce drinking rules at the Harvard-Yale game, the Boston Police will ruin Harvard’s appeal as a venue. Anyone from Harvard who experienced last year’s Game at Yale knows that the Bulldogs will always beat the Crimson when it comes to throwing a good party. New Haven’s relaxed drinking laws, combined with Yale’s benevolent policies towards underage alcohol consumption, make the entire Game experience order of magnitudes more enjoyable. Our players may do handstands in the endzone, but theirs do kegstands afterwards.

Let’s be clear: having more fun (sometimes directly proportional to the amount of beer ingested) is not worth the death of anyone from alcohol poisoning. But those drinking puritans, hailing from Boston and University Hall alike, who claim that their draconian new policies towards underage student drinking at the Game (and across campus) will help to prevent alcohol poisoning may have had a few too many themselves. The keg ban in 2002 only made many tailgates switch to serving hard alcohol—a far more dangerous brew than anything Harpoon can cook up. Renewing the keg ban will renew this danger.

Moreover, it’s extremely doubtful that the Boston Police will have a real impact in curtailing underage drinking, even if they banned tailgates altogether. Not allowing students to bring alcohol to the Game and restricting their access to it at the tailgates means they’ll just get toasted before trekking across the river. You can’t stop students from drinking, period.

A far more reasonable approach to drinking at the Game would be to outlaw large quantities of hard alcohol and legalize kegs. If the city and the College don’t trust students to drink responsibly, they should at least take steps to ban the most dangerous types of alcohol. The College should also help HoCos and other organizations (from Harvard and Yale) obtain the requisite licenses, in order to promote a vibrant, communal tailgate environment in which students will self-regulate their own drinking. If students eschew boring and keg-less tailgates in favor of pre-gaming—drinking massive quantities of alcohol to achieve a 4-quarter-long buzz—University Health Services will have a banner day. The College must take a pragmatic stand towards student drinking in Allston, if only to counterbalance the misguidedness of the puritanical Boston Police. For, as much as we hate to admit it, the way to a better and safer Game goes through New Haven.