Proposed Alcohol Policy Revisions: At a meeting held Tuesday evening, the “Ad Hoc Working Group on Alcohol Policy” released its list of recommendations. Robert Binswanger pointed out that one of the impeti for the committee was that “Dartmouth students are good at game-playing. You had to play the game and beat the system to get in here, and it seems to be the same with the alcohol policy. Dartmouth is not a cafe but an academic institute.” Another point which the committee emphasized was that nit-picking rules are bad, and generalizations are good. The student members of the committee did most of the talking; Binswanger, when he did speak, was very guarded in his words.

Most of what committee said was very general, however, when they started talking specifics, the concerns started. The proposed policy includes registration of all events with 10 or more people, alcoholic or not, to be registered with S & S. The present Tier system is to be abolished. All alcohol must be served by designated servers, students or otherwise, who have been trained in “risk management,” how to recognize those who are drunk, and not provide them with drinks. However, the committee emphasized that they did not want to make “sweeping changes” to the present policy, merely to make it more understandable. The other concrete proposal was removing the one-time nature of the “Good Samaritan” policy, allowing it for multiple uses, but at the same time, implementing some form of parental notification. Another other, not so concrete, aspect was their emphasis on organizational responsibility, actually requiring organizations to see to the safety of participants of their events.

Here are the official committee proposals.