EDITORIAL & OPINION: Learning from a tragedy

We hope that students take a strengthened sense of the need for personal responsibility when it comes to alcohol. In a way, our campus has been lucky to avoid such a tragedy until now -- the spectre of an alcohol-related fatality has certainly visited more than one college campus in recent years. To many on Penn's campus, the implications of drinking to excess had doubtless seemed theoretical. But now, those consequences have taken on a terrible tangibility. And the question on everyone's mind is: Where do we go from here? It bears noting at the outset that we believe this issue affects the entire campus community. If many parties are hosted by Greeks -- and there are certainly lots of other opportunities to imbibe -- the partyers invariably come from outside the Greek system as well. Furthermore, we do not believe that the issue at hand relates only to so-called "closed" parties and alumni functions hosted by Greek organizations, the narrow focus of an "open dialogue" between the InterFraternity Council and the administration in the wake of the weekend's events. Michael Tobin's death is a wake-up call with much broader implications, and it would be misguided to confine the discussion to that limited category of events. Our position is simple, whatever the source of alcohol: the burden of drinking responsibly rests on the shoulders of each and every student. And that responsibility extends both to themselves and to their friends and acquaintances. Of course, regulations have an important place in protecting the health and safety of students. But -- for the most part -- Penn has already implemented the obvious common-sense rules relating to drinking. However, those rules cannot function effectively without the cooperation of students. And rules alone cannot ultimately prevent a student from drinking to excess. The only person capable of doing so is the student. If Michael Tobin's death in any way convinces so much as one student of the dangers of excessive drinking, then something positive will have come from this tragic weekend. It is an outcome that no amount of rules and regulations can ever achieve.