Alcohol policies reexamined by task force
UMass faces possible controversial changes
By Melissa Blanksteen and Dan O'Brien, Collegian Staff
March 09, 2004
The days of "ZooMass" may be over.
Nicknamed for its notoriety as a hard partying school, the University of Massachusetts is facing major changes to its alcohol policies both on campus as well as off.
The University of Massachusetts Alcohol Task Force, put into place in September of 2001 by then-Interim Chancellor Marcellette Williams and the University Health Council, has made drastic and controversial suggestions to curb alcohol usage by students. Recommendations on the table include notifying parents when students are charged with alcohol violations and establishing separate freshman housing.
Student use of alcohol is a central issue of concern for the UMass community this spring, especially community members involved in the Student Government Association and Faculty Senate - the two major legislative bodies in discussion with Chancellor John V. Lombardi and Michael Gargano, vice chancellor of Student Affairs and Campus Life.
The task force presented a report to Lombardi last fall. Meeting every other week, the 22-member group included three student representatives, with Brian Long, SGA secretary for University policy, as the sole SGA representative. The report included a list of changes that the Task Force would like to implement at the University, and a list of statistics regarding student alcohol use.
Report calls for a change in culture
An alcohol survey conducted by "Project Pulse," a polling system set up by the Student Assessment, Research, and Evaluation Office, was included in the task force's report and presented to the Faculty Senate. This report, released this past fall, shows several statistics important to understanding student alcohol use on campus.
One question students taking the survey were asked was, "In your view, to what extent is alcohol use a problem here at UMass?"
A plurality of students, 46 percent, answered "to some extent," 22.4 percent said "to a little extent," and 19.6 percent said "to a great extent."
The task force released an eleven page final report last fall for the consideration of the administration and faculty. SGA received an abbreviated report through Task Force representative Long, who made complete copies available in the SGA office.
The report had both short-term and long-term recommendations focused on reducing the amount of alcohol on campus.
"Its all about education, and trying to change the atmosphere of this campus," Long said of the long-term recommendations. "They look to try and change the culture. If you change the culture to a non-alcohol culture, it's going to be easier to deal with the recommendations."
The task force laid out seven ideas for changing the campus long-term. One plan asks for administration to organize groups of parents, religious leaders, students, and staff to help design a "comprehensive plan to alter the alcohol culture." Others include having alcohol prevention added to academic courses, preparing a yearly report on the University's progress, and adding a new orientation program for new students to inform them of the University's policies.
"That's huge," Long said of the new orientation program. "It's not about drinking. This campus has a lot to offer that's [not alcohol-related.]"
It is the 11 short-term recommendations that have stirred up the most debate, with one recommendation already close to implementation next fall. The report recommends for parents to be notified if their son or daughter is "subject to disciplinary action due to a violation of the University Massachusetts Amherst Alcoholic Beverage Policy."
Letters would only be sent home to parents for certain offenses, according to the report. A first letter would be sent home when a student commits a second offense for having an open container in a public space or underage possession of alcohol. A letter would also be sent home when a student commits a first offense for having a large volume of alcohol, or providing to underage drinkers.
"I don't think there should be any parental notification at all," Long said. "Some students have issues with alcohol and you don't see it."
Long said the recommendation for parental notification is not a good policy, noting that under current rules, parents are not even notified when a students gets kicked out of housing or fails school.
Gargano sees it differently.
"[Students] should act like adults if they want to be independent," Gargano said. "More than the majority [of parents] want to be notified when their sons and daughters get in trouble."
Policy has precedent
The letter sending policy is based on one already in place at the University of Delaware, one of the first schools in the country to send letters home to parents. At UD when a student is tried and convicted of violating any university policy, not just those concerning alcohol, University officials send a nonspecific letter home with a number for parents to call for more information.
UMass, like all universities, cannot send information home to parents based on a federal law passed in 1976 called Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This act protects academic records, including financial aid records, of students unless they release the information through written permission.
Morgan Long, president of Delaware undergraduate student congress, told The Massachusetts Daily Collegian in an email that an amendment was made to FERPA giving institutions the right to inform parents when a student is found guilty of violating university policy. UD has had this policy in place since 1997, and has received little resistance, Morgan Long said.
"It is important to recognize, however, that not every student that goes through the judicial process has a letter sent home to their parents," Morgan Long said. "Instead, this sanction is only imposed when that student has been found guilty and the appeal process has been exhausted."
"I personally am not sure what the letter home will say," Brian Long said. "I do not believe that one has been drafted as of yet. I would imagine that it will say something along the lines of 'your son/daughter violated our alcohol beverage policy' without saying which charge it was or the exact incident."
A second recommendation that the University is closely looking into asks for a "professional security staff be placed in all residence halls."
Long says UMass Police Chief Barbara O'Connor told him to staff the dorms professionally from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. would cost $3.2 million a year.
"It's not practical. That's what it comes to," Long said.
Although Gargano said if O'Connor's estimate is accurate, the University would not be able to afford professional security, he remains worried about the number of crimes in residence halls.
"The number of crimes in the residence halls is far too high for my comfort level," he said.
This relates to yet another recommendation in the report, a request for community billing. With community billing, all residents on a floor would be held accountable for any kind of vandalism. Brian Long said that would not be fair because it would force students to pay for crimes that they did not necessarily commit. Even if an outside visitor were to cause vandalism, the residents would still have to pay.
"Community billing is a method to get people to rat on other people," Brian Long said. "Why should I pay for something I didn't do?"
The task force also recommended that freshmen and students over the age of 21 live separately from the rest of the campus.
Patrick Higgins, SGA chair of Ways and Means, and Adrienne Girard, chair of Public Policy and Relations, both note that Cornell University is one example of a campus that separates freshman from the rest of campus.
As a consequence of Cornell's freshman-only living area, Higgins and Girard noted in their motion on the Alcohol Task Force presented two weeks ago to the SGA Senate that Cornell has "noticed an increase in vandalism and excessive drinking."
Long has his own spin on breaking up dorm life as it exists at UMass.
"This University is already isolated in too many spots," Long said. "I have my own circle of friends. If I was in a freshman dorm, I would be friends with the same people all four years."
The "dry dorm" debate
This year the University began to experiment with substance-free dormitories, with Brooks Hall in the Central living area designated as a "dry dorm" starting at the beginning of last semester. The creation of a "dry dorm" comes in addition to other dormitories that already had wellness and substance-free floors.
Residents of Brooks Hall are split on the issue. While some students willingly chose to live in the alcohol-free dorm, several students said they were placed in the dorm against their will.
"Some people who live here tried to move out, and those kids got placed right back in here," said Jen Leimert, a freshman Brooks resident.
A few other students said residents are frequently receiving write-ups from Residential Assistants. The students said it is unfair because most of the students being written up for alcohol violations did not want to live in Brooks in the first place.
"I don't know what they were expecting, but most people on the first floor have been written up," said Leimert.
"My friends and I all requested [to live in] in Central, but I'd rather live in Orchard Hill than live here. ... We're not even hardcore alcoholics. If you put your stereo volume above 5, you'll hear someone knocking at your door asking you to turn it down," said Megan Coss, another freshman Brooks resident.
Some students did choose to live in Brooks for the alcohol-free environment, however.
"It's a personal decision for me not to drink. I kind of wanted [to live in] Central, and I figured this was an easy way to get in," said freshman Will Holland.
Other recommendations
Another sticking point for Brian Long and many other students relates to fraternity and sorority housing. The Task Force recommends that the "housing units be required to have a faculty advisor who helps members ensure legal and responsible use of alcohol."
Long had one word for this idea, "stupid."
"The faculty should look at grades," he said. "Faculty already have too much on their plate."
Keri Davis, President of Alpha Chi Omega Sorority, said the idea would be beneficial to students who are willing to attend meetings, but she thinks addressing the issue to the entire student body would be more advantageous.
"I think it's a good idea, but we already take a lot of measures [to educate sorority members]," she said. " If they want to work with me, I'd be more than happy to work with them, but I'm not sure that [singling out] fraternities and sororities is the best way to go, because there are other groups too."
Davis pointed out that there are houses that belong to sports teams and off-campus apartments that are consistently the source of student alcohol use.
As for the rest of the Task Force's recommendations, Long approved of five of the short-term plans.
The first of the five is a recommendation that the "number and quality of alcohol free extra-curricular activities for all students at [UMass] be increased."
The Project Pulse Alcohol survey results reported the limited number of alcohol-free extra-curricular activities as a concern. They found that 29 percent of students surveyed strongly agree alcohol-free activities should be increased, and 37 percent somewhat agree "the social life here at UMass is too focused on alcohol."
The task force in its report asked for both an external and internal yearly evaluation of any change in the alcohol culture at the University.
Long also approves of a recommendation from the task force that asks for 25 percent of revenues from the sale of alcohol on campus be used to help fund alcohol free programming. The revenue would come from the Blue Wall Bar and the Faculty Club, among other places.
The last short-term recommendation would "develop and field test an online one credit course for entering students that centers on the current local, state, and federal alcohol policies and laws, and the consequences of binge drinking, alcohol misuse, and illegal underage drinking."
Long agrees somewhat with the final recommendation.
"Not a bad idea, but why do it on top of a new freshman course?" he said. "Freshmen have enough on their plate already. It should be done during the New Student Program."
The SGA is currently planning a new UMass 101 class for freshman. The online course recommended by the Alcohol Task Force would be in addition to the SGA course.
How many of the recommendations in addition to parental notification that are put into effect is up to the administration.
"We're going slow with this," Gargano said. "It was given to us as a guide."
-S.J. Port contributed to this article
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