Prohibition '79

IT'S FRIDAY AFTERNOON after a hectic week. You could hardly wait for the weekend, and your social schedule is booked. You want to unwind after the mental fatigue of attending classes and taking hourlies, so what do you do? You head for the JCR for milk and cookies.

Not many Harvard upperclassmen would find that situation palatable. Years of conditioning with Heinekens or strawberry dacquiris have taught them that a happy glow at dinner might be the best way to start off a weekend. Gov. Edward J. King's election seemed to snarl that pattern, since King railroaded through the legislature the 20-year-old drinking age. However, most Harvard students found last spring that King's legal grip did not extend far into Harvard Houses. The ban on House happy hours decided by the House masters in April lasted for about a week--students and masters viewed each other with benign neglect.

The same state held for House-wide parties. Students knew they were supposed to check I.D.s and buy temporary liquor licenses if they wanted to tap kegs, but few of them did. They maintained they could not break even on dances if they had to pay both a band and $50 for a one-night license. So they chanced the wrath of the Cambridge Police Department--it seemed a pretty safe bet. Harvard parties are almost always uneventful; inebriated students generally head back to their rooms rather than vandalize the city.

The students' rationale for disregarding the law was simply that serving alcohol at parties without a license was illegal already, so serving it to underage students made it just a little more illegal. Hard-core partiers insisted it would be worth a day or two in jail just to be able to throw a tremendous bash.

Not surprisingly, the House masters eventually took a more pragmatic view. If a local liquor merchant, upset with the Houses' flippant dismissal of the law, complained to authorities, or if a sodden teenager raising trouble mentioned he'd gotten the booze at Harvard, it would be the masters' heads rolling. Masters are not the legal guardians of college students, but the House system sets them up in loco parentis. The House masters could therefore not afford to let students run their own happy hours, no matter how discriminate in serving the students promised to be. The potential for a lawsuit is a powerful goad, and the clearcut wording of the new laws allow little room for dodging.

NOBODY then should have been particularly surprised when the masters decided earlier this month that happy hours are really taboo. The question remaining is whether repeating the ban will have any more effect than the original one, and first indications demonstrate that this time the masters are a little more serious. They have protected themselves by saying the actual happy hours are too dangerous to hold. Alcohol at open parties has to be carefully regulated, in accordance with the law.

This policy corresponds to the revised guidelines for college-wide dances issued earlier this fall by Archie C. Epps, dean of students. Liquor will only be allowed at senior class functions--and then only when students check I.D.'s to ensure that all the seniors attending are actually 20 years old. To serve alcohol, students have to buy temporary liquor and public entertainment licenses for a $57 fee. But when the functions are only for the House members, the master has jurisdiction.

Epps said yesterday the guidelines have so far worked smoothly, and students who wanted to throw large parties have--without the demon rum. But even if alcohol is not provided by the hosts, the guests often show up with it.

While the hard-line stance of the administration is no alcohol for underclassmen, masters and students are still trying to work out a compromise. Masters can throw parties with alcohol, even if students cannot, but the funds must come from the House entertainment budget and thus ultimately from the students' room charges. Increasing the entertainment budget to cover the booze the individual students would have bought for themselves before the ban is unfair to the teetotalling minority. Besides, alcohol is expensive; the masters could use their budget to reach many students more often if they were not burdened with a bar bill the size of the French war debt.

MAINTAINING social events in the Houses was the main reason for happy hours, and the main reason why students are scrambling to find some way around the rules. It's not that difficult, because private parties are untouched by the rules, and in at least one House, the happy hours are being served there. And post-football game celebrations, invariably sanctioned by masters, draw crowds to huge House celebrations: Dunster's "zorbels" (otherwise known as a punch powerful enough to flatten Ali), a hot cider and rum at Winthrop and a BYOB bask at Mather. Other Houses are holding "fun hours," a euphemism for a euphemism.

But students seem to be expecting at the same time that the masters will eventually let them do as they please if they only stretch the rules long enough, and that if they ignore the laws, the laws will go away. That doesn't seem likely. On the other hand, the upper classes are not suffering socially; liquor is flowing on Friday afternoons, albeit with a gentle rein on its use.

Some students are even looking at the demise of happy hours philosophically. Frederick Scott '80, chairman of the Lowell House Committee, says, "Happy hours, their time has come and gone. Four years ago there were no happy hours because the drinking age was 21. Three years from now people will have never heard of them." And he adds he is trying to think of activities unrelated to alcohol to interest the Lowell House Committee.

The majority of students, however, seem to think pumpkin carvings, ice cream orgies, donuts, cider and pinball go better with booze. It is basically an unhealthy attitude to believe any social function has to include booze, but the alcohol is just about the only ingredient to ensure a regular House turnout. Holding a weekly cider hour might go over in Tenafly but in Cambridge, weekly happy hours lubricate even the most trivial house functions. Alcohol is no doubt a social crutch, but it is also one ingredient most people in a House will draw around.

So the Houses have reached an impasse. It may not be healthy--it's certainly not legal--to hold happy hours, but they are the one type of activity that will draw most House residents. To maintain House social life, students are searching for every loophole they can find to keep alcohol, and the masters, through creative enforcement of the ban on liquor, are coming as close to condoning the students as they can without defying the law. Ed King may be able to railroad the legislature; he has a long way to go before he can conquer Harvard.

Cheers.