The Alcohol Response Team -- a group of students, faculty and administrators formed to address drinking culture at Penn -- has proposed three specific changes to the University's alcohol policy.
The proposed revisions, if adopted, will prohibit "parties within parties" by mandating that guests remain in a public area and out of bedrooms, increase the number and competency of sober host monitors and charge student organizations with proving their ability to deal with high-risk drinkers.
ART will await feedback from the University community regarding its suggestions. Comments will then be evaluated by the president and the provost, who will subsequently publish the officially adopted policy sometime in March.
ART Chairman and Interim Provost Peter Conn noted that the proposed changes emphasize student responsibility.
"Our best weapon in this struggle is students who are willing to step up," Conn said, adding that "no policy is any better than its implementation."
Psychiatry Professor and ART member Tony Rostain echoed Conn's sentiments.
"We're getting away from just policing [students]."
Stephanie Ives, Penn's director of alcohol policy initiatives, will assist student organizations with their alcohol-related risk training and has already met with some groups.
Director of the Office of Student Conduct and ART member Michele Goldfarb emphasized that the goal of the group was to make the revisions "as practical, realistic [and] as enforceable as possible."
The proposed policy revisions will be published in the Penn Almanac and made available for comment to the University community tomorrow. It will also be possible to access the revisions through the website of the Vice Provost for University Life.
In addition to revisions of policy, ART also suggested programmatic changes such as expanding peer-to-peer education and intervention programs like the Drug and Alcohol Resource Team and Team Sober.
Conn convened ART for the first time this year following the Sept. 18 two-story fall and resulting critical injury of College junior Matthew Paris at a Psi Upsilon University-registered party. ART officials said the group will remain relatively active in the upcoming months, convening at least once throughout the spring semester.
Alcohol policy was last revised in 1999 by the Working Group on Alcohol Abuse. The WGAA was formed following the drinking-related death of alumnus Michael Tobin at the Phi Gamma Delta house.
Policy Revisions
ART suggestions for changes to the
University alcohol policy:
At registered parties, attendance is restricted to the public area designated for the party. Hosts may not entertain guests in private areas (e.g. bedrooms). Private areas are not explicitly restricted under the current policy.
At registered parties, host organizations must provide one non-alcohol-consuming, visually identifiable monitor for every 30 guests (formerly one monitor for every 50 guests). Monitors must be trained to handle emergency situations.
Recognized organizations that wish to host registered parties must design and implement an individualized plan to demonstrate competency in managing alcohol-related risks and also identify strategies for creating an environment where alcohol use is secondary to the event itself.
