Given this week’s Shield theme, I’ve decided to discuss the one food source most college students work into their diet: alcohol. Yes, alcohol, the nectar that seems to be as mandatory as an English class in college.
What’s that you say? We’re a dry campus? Yes sadly, the University of Southern Indiana is a dry campus; meaning, that regardless of age or legality, no person on or in USI property may possess alcohol.
In concept, the dry campus policy, like prohibition in the 20’s, seems like a good policy to have. Ban student drinking and reduce the undesirable results of drinking.
Be that as it may, prohibition failed miserably for a reason; it turned
honest people who wanted to relax and drink into criminals.
Of age students under the dry campus policy must seek alternative measures to fulfill their inevitable desire to have alcohol in their system.
Rather than having the benefit of being in their own campus apartment when wanting to drink, a student has few options. The student could drive to another person’s house to get inebriated, perhaps at a party, then drive back to campus to their apartment, or they could go to a bar, drink and then drive back to school.
One could buy their liquor at a store, sneak it into their apartment and then get caught by security or their RA for making an honest attempt to drink safely.
So the options available are: drink and drive, drink and drive, or face the wrath of the Dean of Students for violating campus policy.
I think those options sound pretty terrible.
I suppose another benefit of a campus alcohol ban is that underage students are protected from the dark evils of alcohol.
Well, according to Steve Woodall, director of security, in a November issue of The Shield, the vast majority of alcohol offenders on campus were underage in 2007.
So it seems that, regardless of policy, underage college students have access to alcohol.
So what are the alternatives? How about amending the current campus policy to allow of age and legal college students to possess and consume a fair amount of alcohol in their apartments, regulating the flow of liquor into campus rather than outright banning it.
It seems like a stretch now, but as time moves on and morals and norms change, perhaps the university will realize that their prohibition of alcohol on campus is not reducing the amount of drinking on campus.
Let’s stop turning responsible, non-belligerent students into criminals.
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And guess what ? Alcohol is not a "food source". Much to learn, much to learn.
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