Two members of the Disciplinary Review Committee met with students in Sellinger Lounge on Wednesday night to discuss the committee’s recommendation that kegs be banned form university housing.
The members, Theology Professor Frederick Ruf and Dennis Williams, associate dean of students and director of the Center for inority Educational Affairs, sought to explain their recommendation and hear student input during the meeting, which was moderated by GUSA President Twister Murchison (SFS ’08).
The DRC voted last semester to recommend that the alcohol policy in the Student Code of Conduct be revised to prohibit kegs from university housing and to increase parental notification and other sanctions for repeat alcohol offenders. Students living in university apartments or townhouses are currently allowed to have up to two kegs per event if one of the residents is over 21 years old.
The recommendations have been forwarded to Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs, who said he will review student input before reaching a decision.
“I do not plan to make any decisions in the next few days,” said Olson, who was not present at the debate.
Many students present at the forum said that a keg ban would merely drive students to other inexpensive forms of alcohol, like hard liquor.
“If you tell students they can’t have kegs, they’re going to find the next cheapest thing,” Ashley Watkins (COL ’08) said during the event.
Matt Stoller (COL ’08), Murchison’s deputy chief of staff, said during the event that, if the ban went into effect, students would consume more cheap brands of hard alcohol, including Everclear, and that binge drinking would not diminish.
Responding to students’ concerns, Ruf said that he was “skeptical” that the inevitable consequence of banning kegs would be increased use of hard alcohol. Williams echoed this opinion, saying that a keg ban would instead reduce binge drinking on campus.
“Kegs are, by definition, a system of mass consumption,” he said.
He added that the university would help decrease binge drinking by taking a firm stance against kegs.
“The point I made was not about curbing binge drinking; it was about authorizing,” he said, referring to his belief that, by allowing kegs, the university implicitly allows binge drinking.
Other students said they were concerned that the removal of kegs from campus housing would cause students to attend more parties off campus, which would strain relations with local residents and put students in greater danger of arrest by the Metropolitan Police Department.
Ruf and Williams said that their recommendation was based largely on policies at other local universities. According to Ruf, the committee examined the experience of all “comparable institutions” in the Washington, D.C., area. He said that only two of the schools they researched allowed kegs in university housing, and that no other universities within the District limits permit kegs.
Others claimed that students have a right to kegs – a right analogous to the constitutional rights to bear arms. One student displayed a sign alluding to a quote by National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston. “You can have this keg when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” the sign read.
Ruf and Williams said that they are unsure as to how the keg ban would affect functions by student organizations with kegs. Williams said it is his interpretation that events in public places, like the Senior Disorientation tent party, would not be affected by the ban.
The forum was sponsored by the Student Association and the Disciplinary Review Committee.
