Photo illustration by Peter Cady
Imagine a typical Friday night.
You battle for a cab to the beach. You walk 20 minutes away from the Grape down Fairfield Beach Road, and arrive at your beach house of choice only to be turned away. Not because you don’t know anyone or you’re one of seven guys in a no-female group, but for the same reason you did not get into the Grape tonight. Because you are not 21. When you finally reach the party you are asked for your StagCard by a fellow student for fear of suspension because he was caught serving underage students.
This is exactly what James Madison University is suggesting to students who live off campus — that they begin to run their houses like a bar or club. Keep those under 21-year-olds out of house parties by carding at the door. Why? Because they are going to begin punishing students for providing alcohol to students who are underage. If an individual receives two strikes, they are suspended for a semester.
For students James Madison, I hope that this does not crush the weekend plans of underage students, and that those who are 21 are not forced into asking to see a license before handing patrons a solo cup.
I hope this will never happen to us here at good ole Fairfield. However, Fairfield as a party school has suffered its own blows, threatening its legacy: no more Clam Jam (’02), no more kegs (’06), no basements (’07), no Spam Jam (’07) and many hours of FYE (’09).
However, one can understand the point that the school is making: don’t serve underage kids knowingly. The only issue here is that this is not a high school party. Instead, college is a place where one shouldn’t structure their friendships based on their date of birth.
The reasoning Josh Bacon, head of Judicial Affairs at JMU, cites is that, “This is just a strategy to keep students safe and to make better choices. It’s a response to the open parties held in the community.”
Our own school has used the safety argument to back up the no kegs policy and the locking the basements. The truth is that the Fairfield students has adapted to nearly every type of attempt to diminish any risky activities.
As any junior or senior at Fairfield can tell you, freshmen have a tendency to simply show up, invited or not, but you can almost always guarantee there is one there. And if freshmen are not drinking at the Townhouses or the Beach, they are going to be drinking in their dorms anyway.
So the game attempting to stop underage drinking futiley continues. We hope that ineffective measures such as carding at the door of house parties never reaches Fairfield University. And for our fellow students at JMU, you are welcome here, ID or not. Well, for now.
Leave a Reply