Spring Break
Letter: Student says dry campus theory seriously 'flawed'
Issue date: 9/17/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion
09/17/08 - To the Cigar,
In the mid 1990s, President Robert L. Carothers made the ill-fated decision to transform the University of Rhode Island into a dry campus.
Much like Prohibition in the 1920s, the theory seemed sound. Ban drinking on campus and student drinking will reduce. By some standards, drinking probably did reduce. Because on-campus gatherings could no longer be advertised like the way they were on a wet campus, the parties became smaller with less amounts of alcohol.
But, as we can see today, this theory is flawed.
Rather than making kids drink less, it made kids take more drastic measures to have fun. What the dry campus did was force students to dwell off campus. This is where it all falls apart.
As the URI department of Housing and Residential Life states on its Web site: "Each year, nearly 50 [percent] of all sophomores and 75 [percent] of all juniors and seniors choose to live in off-campus housing." This negatively impacts the school's income.
URI loses revenue from student housing to off-campus realtors.
In his actions, Carothers guaranteed a loss of capital to the housing department at URI. But it doesn't stop there.
Students who still live on campus are then forced to drive off campus to socialize.
So instead of the common theme among hundreds of schools in the nation, where cars are irrelevant because of parties within close proximity of housing, cars become a necessity to the URI student.
This increases drinking-related car accidents, DUIs, traffic throughout local towns and pollution as thousands of kids drive to and from school every day.
Locals are upset with the students because they have raucous parties off campus in residential neighborhoods where residents have been living for years.
It's hard not to blame them - nobody wants to raise a family next to a house full of fraternity boys.
But is it the students' fault?
Or rather is it an administration out of touch with the realities of college life?
Call me a cynic, but it's hard not to link a student quality of life rating of 66 (from The Princeton Review), student enrollment that dipped after 1990 from 16,055 students to 13,409 in 1997, and has only gone back up to around 15,000 (from the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education Web site) and an upset student body with a policy that works for no one.
Henry Marcus
In the mid 1990s, President Robert L. Carothers made the ill-fated decision to transform the University of Rhode Island into a dry campus.
Much like Prohibition in the 1920s, the theory seemed sound. Ban drinking on campus and student drinking will reduce. By some standards, drinking probably did reduce. Because on-campus gatherings could no longer be advertised like the way they were on a wet campus, the parties became smaller with less amounts of alcohol.
But, as we can see today, this theory is flawed.
Rather than making kids drink less, it made kids take more drastic measures to have fun. What the dry campus did was force students to dwell off campus. This is where it all falls apart.
As the URI department of Housing and Residential Life states on its Web site: "Each year, nearly 50 [percent] of all sophomores and 75 [percent] of all juniors and seniors choose to live in off-campus housing." This negatively impacts the school's income.
URI loses revenue from student housing to off-campus realtors.
In his actions, Carothers guaranteed a loss of capital to the housing department at URI. But it doesn't stop there.
Students who still live on campus are then forced to drive off campus to socialize.
So instead of the common theme among hundreds of schools in the nation, where cars are irrelevant because of parties within close proximity of housing, cars become a necessity to the URI student.
This increases drinking-related car accidents, DUIs, traffic throughout local towns and pollution as thousands of kids drive to and from school every day.
Locals are upset with the students because they have raucous parties off campus in residential neighborhoods where residents have been living for years.
It's hard not to blame them - nobody wants to raise a family next to a house full of fraternity boys.
But is it the students' fault?
Or rather is it an administration out of touch with the realities of college life?
Call me a cynic, but it's hard not to link a student quality of life rating of 66 (from The Princeton Review), student enrollment that dipped after 1990 from 16,055 students to 13,409 in 1997, and has only gone back up to around 15,000 (from the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education Web site) and an upset student body with a policy that works for no one.
Henry Marcus
