On the one hand, you can't blame Dartmouth College President Philip Hanlon for trying. Alcohol has long been a problem at campuses around the country, and particularly at the secluded New Hampshire Ivy. An increasing focus on sexual assault nationwide has made colleges especially eager to do anything they can to avoid problems.
On the other hand, it's hard to put much faith in Hanlon's new initiative: Dartmouth will ban hard liquor on campus, one of several steps to try to end a culture of binge-drinking. Any drink with greater than 15 percent alcohol will be prohibited, and Hanlon threatened to end the fraternity system altogether. The college will also create residential groups for students, intended to foster healthier communities.
The reasons for pessimism are plain enough to anyone who's ever lived on or visited an allegedly dry campus or dormitory. While an administration can drive drinking underground, banning it altogether is more of a symbolic move than a truly effective one. (What are they going to do, search everyone's bags when they reach campus?) Just as abstinence-only sex education has proved a bust, trying to ban hard liquor altogether seems unlikely to succeed; it will just make the culture of hard-liquor consumption less informed, or push it to locations away from campus, where the college has even less chance to safeguard students.
[For more of this story, written by David A. Graham, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...rinking-push/384985/]
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