By Daniel A. C. McBride
Opinion Editor
Ask most Washington College students where the parties are these days, and you’ll get a shrug, maybe a laugh, and then, perhaps an hour into said party, a text. Not because nothing is happening or because the campus community is spontaneous, but because everyone has learned to regard parties not as a typical feature of campus life, but as something akin to fight-club.
“Administration is not very supportive of parties or social life on campus,” Joe Atkins, President of the Phi-Delta-Theta fraternity at Washington College said. “Whether or not it’s their intention, we’re scared of going to parties or holding them, because [in our case] we’re afraid of being shut down.” On it’s face, it’s a routine complaint; students go on about rules, it’s a story as old as higher education itself. But Atkins’s second point is the one worth contemplation: a campus where students are too afraid to throw or attend parties openly is a campus where students never learn how to do it safely. And a party of young adults who have never learned to have fun safely is an incredibly troubling thought.
Atkins is not arguing for chaos, but rather, the opposite. He argues to illuminate an occulted truth: College students are going to drink and are likely to congregate thereafter, regardless of what the Code of Conduct says, or if administration acts as though this does not occur. The real choice the College has is whether the ensuing congregation happens in the open, with lights on and an officer who can knock on a door, or in the shadows: in areas only accessible by car, or in off-campus houses with county-level oversight; All because the on-campus option felt too risky to attend.
Driving campus parties underground doesn’t make them disappear, but inculcates a culture of secrecy, which breeds insecurity. A visible party with regulation is safer than a party held in secret specifically to dodge administrative attention.
Within an ambient of secrecy, nobody calls for help fast enough when calling for help means admitting to a grave violation. Nobody checks on the student who’s had six drinks at a pre-game an hour before when risk-management means non-detection. The fear Atkins describes doesn’t produce quiet, studious weekends; It produces students who have never had a low-pressure chance to learn their limits, in spaces designed to avoid detection rather than, principally, ensuring safety.
None of this means Campus Police should look away from real danger, or that the College should abandon reasonable expectations around noise, property, underage drinking, and general conduct. Rules serve a purpose, but there is a difference between reasonable oversight and a climate of fear that pushes parties off campus entirely. If the goal is actually student safety, as the administration so loudly claims, then the current approach seems to be working against itself. “We just have to have fun, here, and with our friends, and most importantly, get home safely at night.” Junior, Ilia Marquez said.
Underage drinking is an issue in-of-itself, which the college ought continue to handle with the grace and prudence it has historically demonstrated.
Open channels of communication and reliance on peers with specifically delegated roles of authority vis-a-vis the residential assistant network represent valid solutions in the face of these issues. The solution, therefore, is perhaps the reconciliation of these distinct methods of risk management with concessions in the policies of on-campus parties.
WC does not need to encourage recklessness, but rather should embrace this normal facet of the campus experience. The party is going to happen either way.
Photo Caption: WC’s iconic Cater Walk, home to fraternity housing.
Photo by Aaron Rodenhausen