Romero '14: Yes
During my first year at Brown, I remember an upperclassman friend of mine telling me one of his crazy weed stories. He told me that he and his suitemate smoked marijuana almost every day, even once getting caught by the Department of Public Safety. The DPS officer caught my friend’s friend in the act of rolling a blunt and punished him severely by … quietly telling him to put it away. Flash forward one year, and I’m living in a fraternity building via summer assignment after having lived on a substance-free floor for my first year. After the first night of the brothers playing beer pong in the hallways, I learned that the only people who cared about overconsumption of alcohol within dorms were the custodians who had to clean up the mess the next morning.
Brown should be tougher on drugs and alcohol. Brown spaces — especially public spaces — should be safe and free from intoxicated belligerence. When I say “public spaces,” I am including dorms because they are student communities where residents live, sometimes not even by choice, as in the case of summer assignment.
There is a notion that drinking often and doing drugs are just signs of Brown’s famous liberalism. I love the freedom the University affords. But there are better places to consume drugs and alcohol than in public, where doing so has the real potential to be disruptive. As someone who had to step over cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon to enter the dorm’s communal bathroom while inhaling enough second-hand marijuana smoke to nearly become high myself, I think that Brown should be stricter in its drug policies.
Regulating illegal alcohol and drug use is not only sensible but also a sound way to keep our privilege in check. Consuming alcohol at Brown is almost always conspicuous, and there is always someone being excluded from the drunken fun. Many Brown students don’t have the funds to go to the Graduate Center Bar every night or the money to support an expensive weed-smoking hobby. Most of us just want to study those extra two hours at night to do well on midterms. Most of us can’t remember the last time we went to sleep before Morning Mail appeared in our inboxes.
I would suggest Brown adopt a policy against overconsumption — it doesn’t have to be as complex as figuring out a meal plan or as simple as an expulsion after the first time getting caught with a dime sack. Three strikes and you get a disciplinary meeting with a dean. It’s at least worth a test run. People can have fun at Brown, sure, but our current drug-induced, endless mirth needs stricter boundaries.
David Romero ‘14 would, at the expense of sounding like a crotchety old man, encourage students to consume alcohol and drugs more sensibly.
Brundage '15: No
At Brown, should you choose to drink before age 21 or experiment with drugs like marijuana, you can at least be sure the University will still value you as a member of the community. You will be given access to educational tools so that you can learn about the real risks and harms associated with drugs and alcohol, as opposed to relying on government tools that equate marijuana with heroin in terms of potential for abuse. Let’s not take this for granted.
Contrast this policy with that of many other universities, where such mistakes designate a student not as valuable, but rather as expendable to the community. A friend of mine was given a one-year suspension from her university and was required to reapply when authorities found alcohol and a small amount of marijuana in her dorm room.
Another extraordinary cornerstone of Brown’s drug and alcohol policy is maintaining the role of Residential Counselors as peers whose primary concern is the safety of their hallmates. Residential advisers at other universities tend to be feared and often loathed by students who choose to drink during their first semesters in college. This does not establish healthy relationships in which students can approach their residential advisers with problems, particularly if a conflict occurred while the student was intoxicated or even just surrounded by others who chose to drink or smoke.
In order to be tougher on drugs and alcohol, Brown would have to be softer on safety. Since Brown has always made it clear to us that the safety of the student body is the primary concern of the University, students do not fear communicating with authorities, coming to Residential Counselors with problems or calling Emergency Medical Services if they are concerned that a friend has endangered him or herself while intoxicated. They can be sure in the latter case that neither the caller nor the victim will be disciplined — only educated and assisted. These successful policies even served as a positive model for the state, which recently passed the Good Samaritan Law. This legislation eliminates the conflict of interest with the law associated with calling for help if a person has overdosed on drugs.
Brown’s drug and alcohol policies establish a community of trust, not fear. We must continue to support this trusting community and even push harder for safety measures like better access to food, water and equally attractive non-alcoholic beverages at events like Spring Weekend and fraternity parties. Lastly, if we are serious about rejecting the War on Drugs — specifically its attack on minority communities and its utter failure to curb drug usage or addiction rates — then we must continue to reject its principles at Brown.
Matt Brundage ’15 wants to keep the battleground of the War on Drugs off the Main Green.
Romero's Rebuttal:
My colleague is correct in stating that a university should still value a student who chooses to maintain a benign habit of consuming alcohol or drugs. The only problem is that many drinking and smoking habits are not benign but rather endanger both students and public spaces.
I disagree with the notion that “to be tougher on drugs and alcohol, Brown would have to be softer on safety.” My opponent writes that the safety of students consuming drugs is important. This is true, but another point that is not usually considered is the safety of those students not consuming drugs within the vicinity of those who are. If you have ever been on a late-night Josiah’s dinner outing on the weekend, you can safely say that it’s not the sober people for whom you must watch out.
Returning now to the drunken debauchery that takes place in public spaces at Brown: Have you ever seen Jo’s after it is raided by drunken party-goers? Have you seen what the Main Green looks like after Spring Weekend? These and other public spaces suffer litter and abuse, in large part due to alcohol and drug consumers who are too intoxicated to respect University facilities. We must remember that overprivileged drunk students will never be asked to clean messy dining halls or pick up all the leftovers of their pizza on the Main Green. Instead, this will be the responsibility of Facilities Management workers who will have to do extra work to clean up the disgusting and disgraceful mess people left behind because they were too drunk to care.
I agree that students who drink alcohol or consume other drugs should not be ostracized or severely punished by the University. But I do believe our current system of always looking the other way can be harmful for students who do not consume drugs or alcohol and for Facilities Management workers who are shamefully abused by inebriated students. By ignoring the fact that many Brown students may have serious overconsumption problems, we encourage their unsafe habits and allow them to endanger themselves, other students and public spaces.
Brundage's Rebuttal:
It is hard to say precisely why I disagree with Romero, because he gives only a vague suggestion for changing drug and alcohol policy at Brown. But to address Romero’s concerns about beer pong in the hallways, it is already Brown’s policy to send in Department of Public Safety officers to break up these sorts of events if students complain. It is also the policy of the University to have a dean determine whether these students need “appropriate alcohol education, evaluation and/or treatment.”
It concerns me that Romero apparently thinks so little of the large student population that chooses to drink. I am particularly offended by his conflation of participating in a weekend beer pong game and not being studious. It is an entirely subjective judgment that does not justify a policy change.
Romero has a point that there is conflict between students who choose to drink and those who do not, but I believe a big part of the answer to such a problem is better communication between these two groups. The shaming of the former is absolutely counterproductive to the ultimate goal of a safer, happier dorm community. He is right that excessive drinking activities can ultimately burden students studying for midterms, but I have never witnessed a student being rejected when asking others to keep it down because he or she is studying.
Concerning the remarks about checking our privilege, substance prohibition has a dark history of marginalizing and incarcerating the underprivileged members of American society, which I find significantly more disturbing than participation in an activity that may be too expensive for some. Certainly this would not be the direct effect of harsher punishment for drinking and smoking at Brown, but I do believe that the University serves as something of a social policy role model. For Brown to legitimize the standards of the War on Drugs would be shameful.
I believe the hardships associated with troubling experiences like having to “step over cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon” are an acceptable cost given the benefits of community trust and harm reduction that are, in my view, the soul of Brown’s drug and alcohol policy.
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