The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes.

By Joseph Rago | Monday, October 4, 2004

I saw James and Susan Wright at Thayer Dining Hall the other evening, joining the swine for some swill from the trough. Word on the street is that the President is trying to boost his public profile among students. Fair enough—but if he's looking to get beyond 'how-d'you-do' and actually improve the lives of his charges, allow me to offer an idea: fix this school's asinine, convoluted, ponderous, unreasonable, preposterous keg policy.

This is a tricky issue to tackle intelligently, so, first of all, let me qualify all that. If Jim Wright wants to sup in Food Court, he's more than welcome, though I wouldn't recommend it for the provisions. I don't know what he has to do with the alcohol guidelines, if anything (clearly, other administrators are holding the reigns, if he's riding in the coach). Alcohol is not part of the College's academic mission, by any means—but to pretend it is not part of the College experience is absurd. While the keg policy theoretically applies to all student organizations, it doesn't really affect every student. But I suspect most here have at least set foot in a fraternity, and the keg policy—the Social Event Management Procedures, in administrative parlance—overwhelmingly applies to the Greeks. That's the tricky part. Being a Greek at Dartmouth and complaining about alcohol is a sure way to sound like a Frenchman denied his fourth helping of caviar.

So let me be clear. No one is asking permission to serve a swimming-pool's worth of beer or for the College to endorse some rip-roaring spree of alcohol-induced mayhem. No one wants to juice up the pea-green freshman and set them loose in residential Hanover. No one wants a get-out-of-jail-free card, a free hand, or all the strictures freed and eliminated. What is wanted is a realistic, common-sense keg policy, and that is what is utterly lacking.

In its place is a dense and contradictory warren of lunatic rules, artificial procedures, and a way of thinking that borders on embarrassment. Kegs were prohibited some years ago, mainly for cosmetic reasons. Kegs, they said, encouraged binge drinking. Of course, kegs didn't then and don't now—they limit the points where one might get alcohol to one, the tap. Cans can be everywhere at once. Kegs cost less anyways, and even the environmentalists want them back, because they reduce the volume of trash generated by a basement scene.

Now, to get a keg or two, you must register it with the Student Activities Office, and in itself, that's fine: the point is to ensure prudent 'risk management procedures.' But Student Activities has started using a new algorithm to determine the number of kegs that a house is allowed to serve at a social event. It has nothing to do with ensuring safety and everything to do with reducing the Greek system to straits.

What you'll find in this issue is a root-and-branch critique of this surreal system. But here's a typical example. This past weekend, my fraternity threw a party; we worked through the system and leapt through the hoops; and, for a four-hour event, with a band, on the first weekend of the term, with five houses on probation, with an expected six-hundred guests, Student Activities said: you can have one keg. Even using their own beers-per-person-per-hour formula, by simply counting the band and the members of our brotherhood who are of age, we could easily exhaust one keg. Apparently, we were expecting zero guests.

This isn't the way it's supposed to work.

Jesus fed the five-thousand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with only five loaves and two fishes, and all ate and were satisfied. Unfortunately, such great works can't be wrought by mortal hands. One keg simply isn't going to sate six-hundred guests, even if you're serving with an eyedropper.

I should add that an eleventh-hour appeal allowed us to have three kegs, as a sort of gratuity—which illustrates the distance between those in the Student Activities bureaucracy and actual student activities, the extent to which for them real student life remains dark and unknowable. How sad.

Besides, it's time to stop pretending that the Greek system is somehow the tar baby of Dartmouth College. I'm not one to repeat myself—I'm not one to repeat myself—but the Greek system is one of the fundamentals that make this place special and unique, and policies like this betray contempt. Fifty-three percent of students who are eligible to be in a house are, and the numbers are rising every year. No other student activity on campus, with the exception of 'taking classes,' has a yield that high.

A few beers among friends simply isn't a big deal. I'm all in favor of reasonable people disagreeing. But not in this case.

The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes.

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