Holding Students' Hands Back

Harvard’s alcohol policy for first-years is a blend of old-school, heavy-handed discipline and paternalistic patronizing. Such a peculiar mix has this singular consequence: Proctors expect students to behave like adults, but treat them like children.

First-years all remember the harsh meeting during the first week of school, with its predictable Harvard ego-padding (“You’re among the best and the brightest”) and then, paradoxically, some forceful and insulting pronouncements about how dumb we are. Assistant Dean of Freshmen Lesley Nye explained that “Harvard students aren’t smart enough not to drink themselves to death.”

Little wonder, then, that proctors feel they have to do things like, from time to time, raid harmless room parties, pull back the shower curtain and rip off the futon cushion in search of passed-out “dumb” kids. An attitude as paternalistic as that seems to efface the idea that we are actually the “best and brightest.”

Beliefs that Harvard students are both bright and dumb cannot coexist in any sort of coherent policy. Either we are the mature and intelligent creatures of our deans’ fawning tributes, or we are so inept that proctors and deans need to hold our hands. But the Freshman Dean’s Office (FDO) has not clearly chosen a side.

The FDO does, however, try to cast drinking as a health issue. All of its reminders in this respect are basically pointless, though, if students can still get in serious disciplinary trouble for being caught with alcohol. That students—essentially only first-years, since the Houses take a more hands-off approach—could be asked to leave Harvard due to inebriated indiscretions is never disguised.

As a result, students will not view alcohol as a health issue and, even more importantly, will be wary of taking advantage of the College’s health resources, as long as the threat of punishment is looming.

If Harvard is serious about an alcohol policy that treats students like adults, it will instruct proctors to mind their own business. The hand-holding approach obscures for students an important part of college: learning how to live independently.

With policies directing proctors, in the search of naughty behavior, to leave no stone unturned and no futon underbelly unexposed, the proctor’s role as an adviser is seriously compromised. Students view them as beastly authority figures to be avoided.

A laissez faire attitude about alcohol is not exactly a radical proposal, given the way Harvard’s peer institutions regard student drinking—even drinking underage.

First-years at Yale and Princeton don’t have proctors. Although Pennsylvania has some of the most stringent state liquor laws in the country, the University of Pennsylvania does not launch late-night room raids.

It’s time for Harvard authorities to understand that, where the students are the “best and brightest,” there are more worthwhile things to do than bust kids with beer.

Mark A. Adomanis ’07, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Pennypacker Hall.