Over the past weeks, freshmen and other new Hoyas across campus have begun to pick up on the various beats and rhythms of life at Georgetown. In addition to the trips to Leo’s and the endless syllabus pages, for an undeniably large number of first-year Georgetown students, life on the Hilltop also involves alcohol. From the long hallways of New South to the labyrinth of clusters in Harbin, and all the way to Darnall, a significant number of freshmen are drinking. Some students come to campus with a high school career’s worth of beer pong and flip cup experience, while others were tentatively sipping their first taste of alcohol (unfortunately, probably Burnett’s) in the back of a crowded dorm room during NSO. With this illicit boozing comes the reactionary crackdown by RAs, RHO officers, and the University administration.
GUSA executives Trevor Tezel and Omika Jikaria took a positive step forward in Georgetown’s handling of on-campus alcohol consumption with their support of a new university policy, which allows first-year students’ first alcohol violation to be wiped from their disciplinary records.
Adjusting to life at Georgetown is tricky in all aspects, but the threshold for mistakes in the realm of drinking is especially low. The new rule provides freshmen with some more wiggle room as they learn how to navigate the confusing world of on-campus underage drinking.
Undereage drinking on campus is an unavoidable reality, something that takes place frequently and inevitably. The methods of supervision Georgetown employs to crack down on such behavior in freshman dorms—namely, roaming on-duty RAs—could never effectively limit all of the drinking that happens on campus on any given weekend night. RAs have few options in controlling underage drinking besides investigating noisy dorm rooms and monitoring foot traffic. As a result, the students that are caught drinking by RAs often are not the same students who are drinking dangerously or irresponsibly. By punishing first-year students for early alcohol violations, Georgetown is punishing mainly those new students who are unlucky or foolish enough to attract the attention of an RA.
As a result, freshmen, especially in the first few weeks of school, resort to dangerous drinking habits to avoid discipline. Aggressive binge drinking with hard alcohol takes priority, as students can conceal small containers and take shots quickly, thus limiting the potential for punishment if an RA pays a surprise visit.
In addition, first year students’ preoccupation with avoiding RA attention while drinking means that gatherings become smaller and more exclusive. Seeking to keep a lid on noise and hallway traffic, freshmen hosts tightly limit the number of students allowed inside their rooms, leading to uncomfortable rifts between freshman floormates.
Worst of all, however, patrolling RAs have no way of knowing the frequency, intensity, or willingness of students’ drinking when cracking down on a party. An RA may write up a group of students in one dorm who are drinking for the first time, while a group of students down the hall who are at a much higher risk for irresponsible drinking avoid detection.
The new rule on scrubbing first-year students’ first alcohol violations means that all students, regardless of their experience with alcohol, have the opportunity to better understand the risks and consequences of on-campus drinking without permanently tarnishing their record at Georgetown.
Those that suggest that the new policy will encourage more underage drinking among first year students are misguided. Drinking will occur at Georgetown no matter what the rules are regarding violations and personal records, and those who previously would have abstained will not begin drinking in reaction to the rule. Without a massive change in strategy, Georgetown’s current system of supervising first-year dorms for alcohol will remain largely ineffective and unfair. The new policy championed by the GUSA executives will hopefully soften the negative consequences of the old policy by allowing first year students to learn from early mistakes regarding alcohol consumption, without negatively impacting their record at Georgetown over the next four years.
This is very well written. The author makes some good points!