Jackson Mote is a junior
French major from Indianapolis.
CHRISTA SCHRODEL / THE DEPAUW
Kegs could be brought back but it seems rather unlikely to promote safe drinking on campus.
DePauw University’s educational alcohol programming, targeting first-year and upper-class students, has positively impacted the education of the dangers of high risk drinking. The alcohol programming annual report demonstrates the university’s vast effort to promote the responsible consumption of alcohol in social settings. In doing so, the university provides various resources of both proactive and practical nature.
The educational programs such as MyStudentBody.com, Greek 101, DePauw Gets Graphic and new student/mentor meetings are numerous approaches to responsible drinking on campus. The practical approaches include the CATS Team, BACk Down, Nolan Security and identifying high-risk weekends of the year. I believe that the CATS Team is one of the best ways to curb high risk drinking. They are trained sober monitors and know how to be active bystanders. They even provide water bottles and pizza to partygoers throughout the evening.
The other element to responsible drinking at DePauw is the health and safety policies set forth by Greek organizations at their social events. The university works with and meets with fraternity leaders throughout the year to ensure internal policies are conducted that also promote responsible drinking.
It’s too simple to assume that alcohol is available in copious amounts at fraternities’ social events. Opinions such as those reduce the possibility of kegs returning to fraternity property in the future by discrediting all of the work that fraternities do to promote safe drinking on their property. A real factor to take into account is the importance of the individual accountability to drink responsibly and that is exactly what the university’s alcohol programs succeed in doing.
If the discussion of kegs coming back to DePauw is had in the upcoming school year, I would not be surprised to hear the suggestion to completely ban hard alcohol again in favor of repealing the ban on kegs.
Due to the direction that DePauw’s alcohol programming is headed in, it seems unlikely that DePauw would bring back keg parties unless these partygoers completely removed hard alcohol from the setting.
Promoting the understanding of the consumption of alcohol is a necessary component to the culture of DePauw social life. Even though the programming may not have always achieved the goal of preventing over-consumption of alcohol, they are still valuable resources to reduce the quantity and severity of this over-consumption.
Most importantly, bringing back kegs doesn’t fit the agenda to remove DePauw University from the Princeton Review’s annual list of top party schools.
But as Stephanie Wang of the IndyStar once wrote “The party, it seems, rages on in Greencastle.”