It is an average Saturday night at Boston College. Experienced juniors and seniors flock to Mary Anne’s, Cityside, and Joshua Tree; sophomores look to showcase their breadth of social connections by prowling Walsh Hall, and eager freshmen play musical Mods until the 1:50 a.m. Newton bus leaves Lower Campus. A significant number of them will choose to drink. If these thousands of BC students that choose to go out on the weekend can be considered a small representation of nation-wide trends, then 62.5 percent of them will drink to the point that they wake up with a hangover, 54.1 percent may vomit, and 30.2 percent may miss a class. Roughly 10 percent will be taken advantage of sexually.
These are statistics that have been closely monitored by the University with increasing intensity over the past few decades, as administrators have sought to curb the drinking culture. But while a member of the current graduating class may complain that the drinking policies at BC are harsh and sometimes unreasonable, those graduating from the same institution in the 1970s, 1980s, and even the 1990s would assert they were anything but.
Though BC is celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary this year, the changes it has undergone in just the past 50 years are significant – particularly in regards to student life. The class of 2013 has the lowest number of commuter students to date – a testament to the fact that BC’s residential landscape, the structure that has been the defining force in its collective drinking habits, has undergone considerable changes.
“Not a weekend goes by that alcohol poisoning is not a problem,” said Robyn Priest, assistant dean for student development. “Campus is quiet on Friday and Saturday in terms of viable social options, and, couple that with the prevalence of alcohol on campus and poor enforcement, and it’s not hard to understand why binge drinking is so prevalent,” she said. “It’s a combination of all of these factors that makes the environment how it is.”
The University has an official stance as a “dry,” or alcohol-free, campus, and because of this, a series of policies, ranging from a simple warning to suspension from the University, remain as popular punishments for drinking-related violations.
Administrators hold that, first and foremost, the integrity of the law dictating the national drinking age should be upheld. Even so, student safety is also hailed as a critical concern for the administration, officials said.
Discussions have arisen lately regarding the implementation of an amnesty policy that would serve as a stopgap to ensure that students feel comfortable taking themselves or another person to seek medical attention without fear of serious reprimand, should they need help.
The debate regarding the specific nature of this amnesty policy is ongoing, mainly due to the fact that administrators hold reservations that implementing such a policy could possibly exacerbate alcohol abuse on campus.
“My main concern is student safety,” said Paul Chebator, senior associate dean for student development. “We always try to give students the benefit of the doubt and take their needs into consideration, but one of the issues is how many time should we allow that?”
The culture around drinking as it exists on campus today has evolved with the University and the student body. Years of changes in the physical layout of the campus, the student body, and alterations in the drinking age have all contributed to shaping the drinking culture that prevails on and off campus today.
Though the University currently offers housing to the entirety of the freshman, sophomore, and senior classes, as well as 50 percent of the junior class, this has not always been the case.
The foundation for BC’s residential campus was laid in 1907, when former University President Rev. Thomas I. Gasson, S.J., moved the campus from its original cramped quarters in the South End of Boston to farmland he acquired on the outskirts of the city. Following the construction of Gasson Hall and subsequent financial pitfalls, BC grew at a slow pace until the early 1970s, when Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J., a pivotal character in BC’s development, assumed the role of University president.
Under the plan that Monan established for the University, a campus that was formerly a collection of primarily commuter students became overwhelmingly residential. It was with the addition of these housing units – including Walsh Hall, Edmond’s Hall, and the Mods – as well as the University becoming co-educational in 1970, that the drinking culture began to change significantly on campus.
Drinking was legal at the age of 18 in 1970, making the implementation of drinking sanctions a somewhat moot point.
“There was a universal draft for the war in Vietnam,” said Duane Deskins, former president of the UGBC and BC `76. “It’s kind of hard to say you can die for [your] country but you can’t drink for it.”
Not only was drinking allowed on campus, but also the University capitalized on students’ habits. “At one time, there were kegs at tailgates and at the Rat,” Chebator said.
In September 1973, BC opened the “Rathskeller,” an underground pub in the space currently occupied by the Rat. The Rathskeller was open on Thursday through Saturday nights for all students or faculty members who purchased a membership card, priced at $1 per semester. Administrators, including Dick Collins, the housing administrator, and Rev. Edward Hanrahan, the former dean of students, acted as faculty advisers for programming.
The Rathskeller was a completely student-run organization. Students from the UGBC and the Commuter’s Council came together with BC Dining Services to offer their peers 12 oz. draft beers and 5 oz. glasses of wine priced at 30 cents each. The pub had a capacity of 550 and was consistently well attended on weekends and game days.
“The Rathskeller, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night was an alternative,” Deskins said. “It was the University’s way of controlling the party scene. The beer was pretty watered down.”
Deskins said that, because drinking was legal and therefore so prevalent, it served as a means for students to integrate into the campus social life given the lack of social media at the time.
“Today, most students have smartphones and they can connect that way – none of that existed when I was there,” he said. “Alcohol was a physical Facebook. It was simply a way for people to get in touch with each other. The way that you would find people holding onto a cellphone at a party today, you would find people holding onto a beer back then – there were no computers, and people were meeting for the first time.”
Even in this Facebook-less era of basement pubs and watery brew, the administration and students became increasingly aware of the need for alcohol safety measures.
This awareness was even supported in The Heights in their series, “The Heights Guide to Drinking Do’s and Dont’s,” which ran in 1973 and offered tidbits like, “Uncontrolled behavior because of intoxication is the major hazard for young people.”
Sanctions for acting inappropriately due to alcohol or drug consumption, though not explicitly codified, were not completely non-existent. “You could lose housing, receive fines, or get community service – but it was all discretionary by the dean of students,” Deskins said.
The change in the national drinking age was the impetus for significant changes in BC’s drinking policy – or lack thereof. In a matter of a few years, the constructs and rules of the drinking culture students were accustomed to drastically changed.
In establishing new restrictions on drinking, it was up to the University to create a new drinking culture and establish a new norm with regards to alcohol. Administrators said that they did not want sanctions to be punitive, but that the legal drinking age must be upheld in addition to a safe, sound campus environment.
“We have to follow the state law,” Chebator said. “The change in the drinking age from 18 to 21 is the biggest change that has occurred.”
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, BC had a well-founded reputation in Boston as a party school. Because a majority of students could no longer attend programs at the Rathskeller, the impracticality and a lack of funds pushed the University to close the pub in the mid-1980s.
BC’s effective dry status pushed hundreds of students into surrounding neighborhoods on weekend nights. The presence of rambunctious, and now underage, coeds in the neighborhoods began to strain the community’s already precarious relations with the University. To protect BC’s interests in expanding and developing in the Newton and Brighton communities, stricter drinking policies had to be enforced.
On April 15, 1996, a turning point in the University’s treatment of student alcohol use occurred. That day, the 100th anniversary of the Boston Marathon, a group of BC students living off-campus in Newton hosted a party that quickly got out of control, and neighbors suspected that alcohol abuse was to blame. The Boston Police were involved.
An exposè lambasting BC as a party school and a drinking enclave was published shortly thereafter in the Boston Globe. This issue coincided with a plan developed by the University to raze McElroy Commons and build three new buildings on Middle Campus.
The City of Newton, acting against the University, banned BC from proceeding with its building project, as it claimed the University was far too permissive in its treatment of students’ actions, and a new student center would only afford BC students another venue for parties.
Because of community reactions, the University reevaluated its understanding of off-campus drinking habits and became far more cognizant about patrolling this area.
“I don’t think it changed policy, I think it made us more aware of some of the issues off-campus in the student population,” Chebator said.
Chebator said that, because of the extremely public nature of the Marathon party incident, even drawing state police on horseback, the University saw that it needed to foster responsibility among students.
“It made us focus a little bit more and helped us strategize about how we could better educate students and hold them accountable.”
Though the increased focus on drinking gave students the impression that policies had become harsher, it was still not the aim of the administration to put the student body under the rule of a set of draconian policies.
BC decided to sue the City of Newton over its assertion that the University could not build on its own land, and, after years spent battling appeals, the University won. However, Bob Sherwood, former dean for student development, said by that time it was beyond the point at which the construction would have been considered feasible, and the University had already moved on.
Now, on the brink of beginning construction on the Master Plan that is slated to redevelop and expand the landscape of BC’s Chestnut Hill and Brighton campuses, the University is facing similar opposition and apprehension from the neighborhood due to fears over the drinking culture.
“For those that are dissenters of the [current] Master Plan, we offer them the experience of persons living on the Newton Campus,” Chebator said. “There has been little complaints there. The staff on the Brighton Campus would keep an eye on things.”
During the time that negotiations to perfect the Master Plan were taking place with the City of Boston and the Brighton Residents Association, Patrick Rombalski was hired as the vice president of student affairs for the University.
One of Rombalski’s first moves as an administrator was to clarify the drinking policy and sanctions for violations under a system aptly named by students, the “Matrix.”
“The policy did not change, the sanctions were just clarified,” Rombalski said. “Students were always receiving sanctions, they are just codified now. When I arrived here, we were under responding to policy violations and not acting as a prohibitor.”
Rombalski said that his aim in introducing any new drinking sanction is to create an environment on campus that is tolerant and respectful of all lifestyles – sober and otherwise.
“The policies are not meant to be a silver bullet,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a silver bullet in alcohol prevention – they’re supposed to be more environmental than anything. The number of students coming to BC that don’t drink is going up every year. We need to allow these students to exist in a reality that doesn’t include alcohol.”
Rombalski said that he understands underage drinking has become an expected activity in college.
“We’re human,” he said. “But, because drinking has become so engrained in college life, there’s a real permissiveness. I’m looking at comprehensiveness. If I can get a student to go down from seven beers to five in a night, that’s a success story.
“Any sanction that you put in front of a student is going to be unpopular. But so many alcohol-related [incidents] occur every weekend, if it was something else that was effecting that many students, like a gas leak in the Plex or food poisoning in McElroy, we would shut down the University and solve the problem. It should be the same with drinking.”
The alcohol-counseling program, a “menu item” on the Matrix that is required of students who violate policy multiple times in hopes that they can reevaluate their relationship with alcohol, is aimed at opening the eyes of students to the huge effects of binge drinking. “Drinking is the biggest barrier to learning at BC,” Rombalski said.
Though students that violate the Matrix are put through counseling and rehabilitation programs, the only alcohol education program required of all students is the AlcoholEdu series.
“Our efforts have not drastically changed behaviors,” Priest said. “There are pockets of influence, but there is still the heavy influence that college is a time for high alcohol use. Some students would argue that this is a hard school in terms of drinking policies, but the ability to drink here is prevalent. Students’ perception is that the policies are intense, but my perception is that it is easy to drink on campus, and there is not a high level of fear of getting caught.”
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