The Penn Police stress that their priority when dealing with incidents involving alcohol is keeping students safe, not arresting those who violate underage drinking laws.
The most important factor, they say, is for students to take personal responsibility for their drinking behavior.
"We're not out there to look for violations," Penn Police Chief Mark Dorsey said. "We're out there to make sure people are safe."
At the same time, however, Dorsey said, "We don't let the obvious violations go by. If we see a student drinking out in the open, then that has to be dealt with. ... We take each occurrence on its own."
For students to be cited for underage drinking, they would need to draw police attention, for example, by urinating on the street.
"The police are not there to see how many students they can lock up at night," Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said, adding that police do enforce the law if necessary.
This approach is consistent with those of other Ivy League schools. Harvard University Police Department spokesman Steven Catalano said that his school's stance on underage drinking is fairly similar to Penn's.
Alcohol violations at Harvard are addressed within the disciplinary structure of the housing system. Catalano said that in his five years on the job he could not recall any underage student being arrested for drinking.
This stands in stark contrast to the policies at some larger state schools, such as Pennsylvania State University, where Police Supervisor Dwight Smith says that six to eight underage drinking arrests are made in an average week. That number nearly triples if there is a home football game, he said.
"We take a no-tolerance approach," Smith said, adding that far from being confined to Thursday and the weekend, drinking and partying are prevalent every night of the week at Penn State.
If police at Penn State have some sort of reasonable suspicion that underage drinking is going on, he said, such as a student staggering, stumbling or carrying an open bottle of alcohol, then they will approach that student and administer an on-the-spot breath test with a portable device.
Dorsey believes, however, that most problems involving alcohol at Penn can be prevented well before police officers are forcced to get involved.
"The big thing is to educate people. Make sure people are clear what their responsibilities are," he said. "I believe in a strong alcohol policy, but I believe we have to be responsible."
Rush said that blatant disregard of alcohol laws is not as prevalent now as it was in the '80s and '90s.
"It was nothing back in the '90s on Spring Fling weekend for 70 people to be arrested for underage drinking," Rush said, noting that the number of student arrests at Spring Flings in recent years was drastically lower.
"I think in the late '90s we let the students know that they cannot break the law and flaunt that they are underage," she continued. "What was once out of control is now much more under control."
