The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

Opposition to campus drinking policy

Can you feel it in the air? The tension between students and administration is so thick you could cut with a knife. Who knew that a few summer meetings, which outlined new sanctions in the Student Handbook, would cause so much attention? The way this growing conflict is shaping up, it’s going to make the bookstore controversy look like a love-in. Of course, I am specifically referring to the new punishments for students that are caught with alcohol and drugs. This new policy that is drawing all this attention involves the new recommended sanctions for being caught with drugs and/or alcohol. Students are not so much to a large extent, upset with the new punishments. However, because these changes were made during the summer, students feel (and rightly so) that the school has gone behind their backs in creating these new sanctions. As a school, we pride ourselves on having a strong community and when something like this happens, the members of the community are left feeling betrayed. The end result is a community divided.

In the interest of fairness, though, the school’s policy has not changed and is the same as in previous years. However, in recent years, Guilford has made an effort to join the ranks of top-tier collegesm, accepting more students, building a brand new science building, and enough Internet jacks so that everybody has high-speed net service.

With all these changes, though, the school also now sees itself joining the ranks of other top-tier colleges with students who are top-tier drinkers. Last year, the school had six people go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and the school is worried that the 1st, 2nd, or 8th time that it happens this year (and it will happen…if not already), the student is not going to make it to the hospital. Thus the new sanctions for alcohol, which are much stiffer than last year’s slap on the wrist community service and probation.

The controversy first started when students discovered that these new policies were made during the summer, with no student representation. However, in the handbook on page 13, it states clearly “students have representation on all institutional, administrative, faculty, and board level committees…” The end result is that because the school was so adamant on having new sanctions set for the 2001-2002 year, they have undermined the students at this school’s right to representation.

Most bothersome about the new policy is that the punishments also undermine our judicial system. Under the third offense alcohol violations and the second offense drug violations, the recommended sanctions are suspension or dismissal. If you flip to page 44 of the handbook, under the purview of the Judicial Board it says, “The board shall have original jurisdiction over all non-academic cases where suspension or dismissal is recommended…”

What that means is that the school has no authority to recommend sanctions for what will be a case for the judicial board. If it was worded in a way where the sanctions by the judicial board could lead to a suspension or a dismissal, that would be different, but it’s not worded that way.

It is new policies like this one, that are done during the summer and without student representation, that are the cause of the inherent distrust that many students here have for the administration. With these new sanctions, the school is fighting human desire and want with fines, security officers, and threats of dismissal.

I will go out on a limb and say that human desire is going to win this one out. These types of rules are going to make students be only as careful so as not to be caught. That’s not effective policy making; that’s pure insanity.

The school does not have the ability to fine everybody that drinks and they can’t suspend everybody that drinks, but they appear to be ready to try. The school continues to handle this problem the wrong way. This is a complicated issue and I do not know the answer to it.

What I do know, however, is that these new sanctions are a step backwards, not a step forward. As a school, as a community, and as individuals, we must always try to move forward, not backward.

The messages being sent here to the students are loud and clear. We can only have representation when the school decides not to go behind our backs, and the judicial process that represents you, the students, can be bypassed.

This article is not an attack on school policy, but an attack on deceit, the infringement of student rights, and an attack on the system that I am a part of as a member of the judicial board. For the first time, I feel that the system that I serve has let me down.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote; “No more good must be attempted than the people can bear.” Go out and ask some students how much of these rules they can swallow, but stop before they start to choke.

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