A Shot in the Dark

Concerned by students’ overindulgence and their parents’ attorneys, a small cohort of administrators has, for the past semester, mulled changes to Harvard’s alcohol and drug policy. The Committee on Social Clubs has met secretly, charged with figuring out how to keep kids from nearly killing themselves, and how to punish them when they do.

This morning, Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd will present the group’s hitherto-confidential report to the Committee on College Life (CCL). The document outlines a litany of proposed changes to the Student Handbook which will alter the way the College interacts with final clubs, fraternities and sororities—on paper, at least.

Greek organizations have been officially barred from the Harvard campus for a century, and final clubs were disowned by the administration in 1984, after demands to go coed were rebuffed. Nonetheless, both sets of organizations have provided University Hall with their fair share of headaches. This latest report comes in response to what it calls “two near-death incidents” this past fall, one of which happened at an off-campus booze-fest hosted by a recognized student group, the other of occurred during a social club’s initiation.

The Committee recommends that, for the first time, the officers of student groups—whether or not those student groups are recognized by the administration—will be held “personally responsible” for any incident “where serious harm, or the potential for serious harm, has come to any person as a result of consumption of alcohol or drugs,” at an event hosted by their organization. In other words, if a student makes a late-night visit to the Stillman Infirmary with a stopover at a final club basement, the Administrative Board of Harvard College will hold the leadership of that club personally responsible for the incident.

There’s nothing objectionable in the decision to officially recognize the central role social clubs play in Harvard’s undergraduate nightlife. At present, the groups are only mentioned in the Handbook for Students in the context of their not being recognized by the College: Students are implored to “make well-informed decisions when considering membership in these organizations,” and that’s it. It’s admirable that the College has realized that, despite warnings from administrators, students overindulge at off-campus parties frequently enough to merit more than passing mention in Harvard’s rulebook.

Despite its abundance of good intentions, the College has sabotaged its own proposal. A lack of student involvement in the process of drafting the report has condemned its recommendations to failure. By taking a confrontational approach to the problem of drinking at underground fraternities and sororities and at Mt. Auburn’s posh speakeasies, the College stands to alienate the very people whose support it needs most—undergraduates.

If the report is given the green-light by the CCL and the Dean of the College, it will go to the Faculty Council for final approval. The outcome will be changes to the Handbook that, while symbolically important, have no teeth. Leaving aside the fact that most undergraduates pay as much attention to the Handbook as they do to Undergraduate Council (UC) legislation, implementing the changes would require a degree of cooperation from social clubs that far exceeds what University Hall is likely to get. The groups would be required to “provide the Office of the Dean of Harvard College with contact information for all undergraduate officers by October 31,” and to “sign and return to the Office of the Dean of Harvard College the College’s non-hazing attestation form by December 15.”

I can just imagine Dean Kidd trick-or-treating down Mt. Auburn street on October 31, collecting names, email addresses, phone numbers, and signed agreements not to haze new members from final club presidents.

Even if the College were to somehow induce social clubs to officially document the names of their officers, while threatening to punish those same officers for their guests’ drinking, the brusqueness with which the new rules are to be implemented leaves little doubt that the administration’s good intentions will go unfulfilled. Not only were fraternity, sorority, and final club leaders not part of the discussions that produced the report, the College also didn’t include its favorite UC representatives until the very end of the drafting process.

Indeed, the Committee recommends the threat of personal responsibility for social club leaders—the policy in place at Yale and Dartmouth—as a “useful deterrent to dangerous and sometimes illegal behaviour,” even as it confesses that, “the students with whom it consulted disagree with this recommendation.”

By not soliciting student input in crafting its hard-nosed recommendations, the College risks closing the door on the kinds of cultural changes that are needed to make club basements safer social spaces for undergraduates. Toothless, unilateral threats veiled in a thin layer of legalese are an unacceptable substitute for an inclusive process which includes social club leaders in evaluating how best to make their parties and their initiation practices safer for both their members and guests. After all, difficult though it may be for College bureaucrats to believe, social clubs have a vested interested in not killing off their members.

Hollow threats are no way to make off-campus parties safer for undergraduates. The report suggests that the College would rather protect itself legally than protect its students. And that’s unacceptable.

Adam Goldenberg ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. He is a member of a non-recognized student group. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.