LETTERS/ YOUR VIEW: Mother Rodin and martial law

To the Editor: The alcohol ban on the Penn campus is ludicrous for both the message it intends to convey and the one that students actually internalize. Mandating a dry campus is nothing but Mother Rodin whispering: Children, you've been bad. So stay at home and do not touch The Drink. And here is why students have reacted so negatively: most of us do not feel like we have been bad. We drink. We like to drink. And we like to get drunk. But the vast majority of students at yesterday's rally are upset because they have not misbehaved. But maybe Mark Fiore needs "proof." Should we compile a list of those students who drank last Saturday night with no adverse result other than a headache on Sunday morning? Undergrads who drink responsibly are thus hearing another message: bring the keg in through the back door, drink before going to the party or just get yourself downtown for the evening. Why? Because the grown-ups panicked in the face of a tragedy and could not think clearly. Last semester a student was assaulted in the Wharton School. What makes that occurrence relevant is that administrators analyzed the situation and found a rational solution to ensure the incident would not happen again: improve security measures in buildings around campus and increase awareness among students and officers. There were alternative measures available to policy makers that would have solved the problem as well -- close all school buildings after dark so students have no place to go or, better yet, impose a curfew for undergrads. Sounds absurd, yet such extreme measures are equivalent to Rodin's knee-jerk alcohol ban. Perhaps she would have been better served prohibiting students from climbing a flight of stairs for fear that a student might fall. Today's rally was about the faulty manner in which the temporary policy was decided upon. It was also a demonstration of student responsibility that almost all of us practice every time we have a drink. Siona Listokin Wharton '00 On Prohibition To the Editor: Yesterday's letter by Courtney Grow and Joe Mira ("Response to Penn's policy," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 3/30/99) is not very accurate about the success of Prohibition in the years after World War I. I co-teach an undergraduate research seminar on alcohol abuse at Penn, General Honors 216-301; the readings in this course include historical materials that look at national campus trends in the 19th and 20th centuries. It turns out that for several years prior to enactment of Prohibition, student leaders on a number of elite campuses were already proposing and implementing changes in campus alcohol policy and social norms around alcohol. They were responding to the problems generated by increased access to alcohol in the first decade of the 20th century. Even before Prohibition, at schools such as Yale University and the University of California, student alcohol use was becoming more heavily regulated than it had been prior to 1910; students themselves were less tolerant of out of control drinking than they had been prior to 1910. As a result, most campuses reported a notable decline in alcohol-related violence, injury, verbal harassment and disruption of academic achievement. This trend continued well into the late 1920s when student opinion began to shift away from support of Prohibition and toward increased access to alcohol. This shift, however, was not due to the "failure" of Prohibition as Grow and Mora seem to believe. The key thing is that the post-1910 changes -- and their positive benefits for campus life -- were often initiated by students themselves. These changes were in place even before Prohibition. Our seminar on alcohol abuse at Penn is likewise designed to engage students in problem-solving around Penn's own alcohol norms and policies. The students are developing constructive proposals to help reduce the risks that students take when they choose to drink. I hope that students in this seminar will be invited to participate in upcoming campus discussions about the future of alcohol at Penn. Kurt Conklin Office of Health Education Political band-aids To the Editor: Is anyone drinking less because of this new policy? No? It's OK. The dry campus was not meant to lessen the amount of drinking. If that was the point, the administration would have followed through with the committees they formed last year when there were those hospitalizations and deaths at other schools. Instead, they waited for something more serious and more local to occur. They had an excuse to make a political move, a band-aid meant to cover up the problem instead of addressing it. Yes, it is a "temporary" move while a permanent solution is found, although I doubt how temporary it is. On the other hand, what does it accomplish? Is it making us drink less while they look for a solution, if they ever bother to seriously do so? Is it just making us angry, forcing us to drink in our rooms, or worse, at parties far enough off campus that University Police won't bother us? Is it discouraging us from taking sick friends to the hospital? Is it encouraging the use of other drugs? These are questions the University administration should have addressed before taking such a rash action. My suggestion is to look for practical solutions to problems instead of political ones. You can't stop everyone from drinking; you know that. Why not reduce the shackles and make sure that drinking occurs at registered events? All that this dry campus accomplishes is ensuring that everyone drinks where there is no monitoring. Noah Bilenker College '99 Making it personal To the Editor: I just finished reading Mark Fiore's column in Monday's Daily Pennsylvanian ("? or did the student body have it coming," 3/39/99) and I am really disgusted by his comment regarding Sarah Gleit and her stance on the new alcohol policy. Where does this person get the right to criticize Gleit? Where does he get the balls to describe her position as "hypocrisy"? Obviously, Sarah and her family experienced a tragedy with the loss of her brother. Just because she has gone through this, however, doesn't mean she cannot question the fairness of the ban. It would be very easy for her to rush to judgment and criticize the policy. I think she deserves credit for considering both sides and for taking an opposing stance. Fiore is completely out of line to openly criticize Gleit as he was in no way connected to her personal business. This guy should just shut the hell up. Jeffrey Levine Wharton '99 A lame spectacle To the Editor: I just came back from attending today's lame spectacle. Anyone who thinks that that rally was about student consultation and not about the fact that undergraduate functions are temporarily dry is sadly mistaken. Although I could go on about the ludicrous behavior displayed by my peers, which included signs inferring President Rodin was both a fascist and a communist, I would prefer to focus my attention on the rally's organizers. These esteemed individuals led the campus on a crusade appallingly disproportionate to the impact of the administration's actions. In all my four years at this University, I have never witnessed such large numbers of students come together in protest and there certainly has been no shortage of other opportunities. I have personally worked with some of the speakers at today's rally and lamented with them about the piss-poor state of student influence on this campus. Yet at no other time did those same individuals ever dream of holding a rally. Conspicuously absent from the speeches were any comments about how we might go about solving our crisis of consultation. There were no suggestions for new forums of student involvement or suggested guidelines for voting on issues of importance. As far as I heard, no one asked how we could make the existing alcohol policy task forces more effective. Bill Conway, a member of the University Council's Committee on Consultation, never mentioned anything about the failings of that committee's recent report. The report recognizes that almost all undergraduate influence is at best informal, yet it calls only for the formalization of meetings between the president and the three chairs of the Faculty Senate. Today's rally seemed like the perfect opportunity to make concrete proposals for long-term structural change but none were made. No one talked about the fact that much of the consultation that goes on at this school is behind closed doors and with a handful of select representatives. No one talked about the fact that often decisions are made and only then are students brought in simply to figure out the best way to implement those decisions. No one talked about how this University is so decentralized, students can hardly figure out which office controls what or who is actually making the decisions. And no one talked about the fact that consultation is only just that; it is no substitute for formal and equally weighted participation. Sadly, after the dust settles and the administration and students reach some compromise about alcohol, the vast majority of students will quickly forget about the larger issue of democratic participation at our institution of higher learning. When another year goes by without student trustees, without student input into faculty tenure, without an improved committee structure and with little serious dialogue about campus issues, the administration will sit back and rest without any fear of a real challenge to their authority. So to all those who attended the rally today, did you feel really important? Did you feel like you were actually making a difference at this University and working for long-term structural change? Do you even care? Hillary Aisenstein College '99 And e-mail for all To the Editor: In her column, Emily Lieff ("Let us back on to the Internet," DP, 2/25/99) properly called attention to the frequent queues for seats in Van Pelt's first floor Electronic Lookup Center. While those lines consisted of students waiting for a convenient spot to do e-mail, they also included students and faculty waiting to use Franklin, library databases and e-journals for research. As the use of e-mail escalated in recent months, complaints from both students and faculty grew in response. It's not easy to balance competing demands for finite resources but after a careful assessment of computing capacity in Van Pelt Library, we reluctantly decided to remove Telnet in order to focus on research access. This decision took into account the primary function of the 34 stations in the Lookup Center: to provide ready access to electronic information, with high-end computers, networked printing and reference librarians nearby to help users negotiate complex electronic resources. The remaining 120 computers in Van Pelt-Dietrich and the more than 100 laptop connections to the campus network on various floors, including the first, continue to serve e-mail needs. This week, we will install eight new full-function PCs in Rosengarten, providing students nearly 50 e-mail-capable computers within a few steps of the Library's front door. New e-mail stations will be coming on-line across campus in the near future and as a result of the provost's approval to move ahead with ground floor renovations, even more workstations and laptop connections will be created in Rosengarten within a foreseeable time frame. With 220 ports available for e-mail now, and more on the way, the library is playing a significant role as a provider of convenient access for the Penn community. Patricia Renfro Assoc. Director, Public Services Van Pelt Library