Guest Opinion: Curb the drinking problem — make the campus wet
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Every year, the administration discusses the UI’s binge-drinking problem, recycling the same failed solutions.
Solution one: Make UI dry through a campuswide form of prohibition. Solution two: AlcoholEdu, an attempt to educate students about responsible ways to drink and relieve peer pressure. And one of the pet projects, solution three: Provide alcohol-free alternatives to a wasted night on the town. This final approach tries to solve the problem through economics: The UI and UISG feel that if attractive options besides drinking are available, students will not drink themselves to the ground every weekend.
This theory is seriously flawed.
Two types of pairs of “goods” (things that consumers value) in economics, are “substitute” goods, and “complementary” goods. Substitute goods are two goods that, when demand for one increases, demand for the other decreases. Two goods are complements if, as demand increases for one, demand for the other also increases.
The UI administration makes a night spent drinking and a night spent sober into substitute goods.
This would mean the reason Iowa students drink is because they have nothing else to do. Evidence seems to show that alcohol is not a substitute but a complement to sobriety. Hawkeyes don’t want to have fun being dunk or being sober, they want to have fun being drunk sometimes and sober at others. Most of the students who go to the alcohol-free alternatives wouldn’t be drinking anyway, and the students who get black-out drunk every Friday and Saturday would not change their ways unless all of Iowa’s liquor stores suddenly closed. (Even then, I wouldn’t bet on it.)
If creating alternatives will not solve the problem, what will? The first thing that should be done is repealing the policy of dry residence halls. Hall coordinators tell residents, “The UI doesn’t tell you not to drink, we just don’t want you doing it here.” If the administration cares about student safety, why is it enforcing a policy that encourages students to go drink downtown until 2 a.m. instead of in their home environment, where they won’t get assaulted?
Resident assistants are an untapped resource in solving this problem. The current policy is for RAs to report residents who drink, causing hefty fines. If students were allowed to drink in the dorms, they would have their RA, someone whose job is to be their friend and mentor, to ensure their safety. The RAs doing rounds could knock on residents’ doors occasionally to check on them. If university officials can’t stomach entirely wet dorms, milder policies could be put in place.
We’ve all heard the saying “actions speak louder than words.” The UI administration needs to pick up this mantra. Instead of hollow rhetoric about working hard to keep the university safe and dry through draconian, ineffective policies that do nothing but deny the problem and exacerbate issues with student safety, let’s accept alcohol in college as a reality and try to make it safer.
I’ll drink to that.
Will Mattessich is a UI student and member of Hawkeyes for Progress.
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