This semester, DePauw Student Government has been working on a piece of legislation regarding the birthday books at local stores. Upon enrollment at DePauw University, one’s name and birthday are given out to local businesses that serve alcohol in an attempt to keep students under the age of 21 from buying alcohol easily. However, there have been some student concerns about these books.
Some students are concerned about the easy access to their information. Because these books exist in some of the larger stores such as Walmart where there are a multitude of employees, some feel especially nervous.
“They have your full name and birthday, and all they need is your social security number to steal your identity,” said first-year Hanna Wade, a DSG representative.
Problems can arise from the way that students’ names are written on their ID’s. Other problems arise with students leaving campus for a period of time. In addition to these student concerns, there have been issues with customers who are over 21 and do not attend DePauw.
“There are some people who are college-aged and look like they are students at DePauw who have not been able to buy alcohol because their name isn’t in the book,” said junior Claire Halffield, a DSG representative.
This legislation aims to ameliorate this issue.
“We are hoping it will improve community relations, so we don’t have any community members who are bitter because people assume they are a DePauw student and they aren’t,” said junior representative Amy Brown.
Another large problem with the birthday books is that many students are unaware that their information has even been supplied to these vendors. This is particularly true for students under the age of 21 who have never attempted to purchase alcohol from them. A major concern for DePauw Student Government with this piece of legislation is to increase student awareness of these books.
“DePauw is giving names of students, so if they are going to be doing this, then students should at least know that community businesses have this information on them,” Halffield said.
Some concerns center around how employees should use the books, for there is currently no training process about how to properly utilize them. Often, cashiers will expect students to know what page of the book they are on, and this can be a major problem for students over 21.
“By having a better training process in place for people who are going to be using it, we’ll be better able to use the birthday book effectively,” Halffield said.
DSG does not condone underage drinking, however they do want to address the difficulties that over-age students have voiced about these books. As well as the concerns voiced by students of all ages about the release of their information.
“We just feel like maybe it will protect people’s identities a little bit more,” Wade said.
Currently, there is no legislation written, but DSG is drafting a piece that will hopefully be finished by the end of the semester.
“I’m hoping by the next assembly in April it will be done because that is very attainable,” Halffield said. “We still just want to make sure we completely understand the process and that we have used all the resources that we could to make sure that we are doing the best job we can and adding things in that are actual student concerns and not just things that we think are student concerns.”