Also, why are they punishing the rest of the school, when we have no problem drinking responsibly? Punish the first time offenders harshly, and if they do it again, they should lose their protection from the school if they are underage. I think that will be a good deterrent as well. They are, after all, breaking the law. It is embarrassing for us, as a school, that we have people that insist on drinking until the health authorities have to be involved. It is embarrassing for them, and it is embarrassing for their parents. If someone here drank too much and died from alcohol poisoning, i guarantee you that the school will take drastic actions that were unnecessary, and I would feel guilty. I shouldn’t feel guilty, because it will not be our fault, we can provide all the alcohol we want, at the end of the day, all it takes is for a student to say no.

Also, why are they punishing the rest of the school, when we have no problem drinking responsibly? Punish the first time offenders harshly, and if they do it again, they should lose their protection from the school if they are underage. I think that will be a good deterrent as well. They are, after all, breaking the law. It is embarrassing for us, as a school, that we have people that insist on drinking until the health authorities have to be involved. It is embarrassing for them, and it is embarrassing for their parents. If someone here drank too much and died from alcohol poisoning, i guarantee you that the school will take drastic actions that were unnecessary, and I would feel guilty. I shouldn’t feel guilty, because it will not be our fault, we can provide all the alcohol we want, at the end of the day, all it takes is for a student to say no.

The biggest difference I see in the string above and the descriptions of campus life today, is that there is enough binge drinking going on campus that it is only a matter of time before someone dies. Whoever “blew a 40” is lucky to be alive. How would you feel if you woke up on a Sunday morning to find out one of your classmates died at your fun and awesome college?

Other differences would be no one walked around swigging from fifth of hard booze (that would have been viewed as pathetic) and we didn’t need drinking games to pound a few drinks. We drank over the course of an entire afternoon/evening (call if social drinking if you like) rather than seeing how much we could consume as fast a possible on the front end.

As for the social reputation of the CMC campus, as far as I can tell it is now one that revolves around binge drinking. If the recent grad is concerned about the administration trying to make the school more like Harvard, there certainly is a segment of the student population that is trying to make it more like San Diego State.

I am not in favor of the college going dry – like the recent grad points out that will only drive the drinking off campus or under ground. Instead the student body needs to figure out how to avoid allowing its fellow students from getting so wasted that they risk serious injury or death. Yes, you do have that responsibility for each other’s welfare – that’s part of being a CMCer.

Finally, the only violation of trust I see in all of this is that the school trusted the entire student body to act responsibly with alcohol and a select few students violated that trust. You blew it and you (not the DOS) need to fix it.

Bottom line – have fun, but police yourself, watch out for you classmates, and avoid a tragedy. That’s leadership.

The biggest difference I see in the string above and the descriptions of campus life today, is that there is enough binge drinking going on campus that it is only a matter of time before someone dies. Whoever “blew a 40” is lucky to be alive. How would you feel if you woke up on a Sunday morning to find out one of your classmates died at your fun and awesome college?

Other differences would be no one walked around swigging from fifth of hard booze (that would have been viewed as pathetic) and we didn’t need drinking games to pound a few drinks. We drank over the course of an entire afternoon/evening (call if social drinking if you like) rather than seeing how much we could consume as fast a possible on the front end.

As for the social reputation of the CMC campus, as far as I can tell it is now one that revolves around binge drinking. If the recent grad is concerned about the administration trying to make the school more like Harvard, there certainly is a segment of the student population that is trying to make it more like San Diego State.

I am not in favor of the college going dry – like the recent grad points out that will only drive the drinking off campus or under ground. Instead the student body needs to figure out how to avoid allowing its fellow students from getting so wasted that they risk serious injury or death. Yes, you do have that responsibility for each other’s welfare – that’s part of being a CMCer.

Finally, the only violation of trust I see in all of this is that the school trusted the entire student body to act responsibly with alcohol and a select few students violated that trust. You blew it and you (not the DOS) need to fix it.

Bottom line – have fun, but police yourself, watch out for you classmates, and avoid a tragedy. That’s leadership.

So why do they continue to send these email if things never change drastically like DOS says? Because the emails encourage how, over time, things have changed gradually, and this trend will continue until at some point we are a dry campus. It has been my opinion for some time now that this is the long term goal for DOS because our current situation does corresponds well with the school’s strategy to have the world look at us like Harvard. This strategy makes sense for upping our reputation, but I believe it is shortsighted and even dangerous.

Our school’s policy is awesome for a couple reasons. One, it makes most students love our school to death. How fun and awesome is our school? Boner-swellingly fun and awesome. Second, it is safer. Allowing students to drink freely discourages drunk driving to LA and/or ripping 20 shots in your room before you go out so you’ll be sustained for the night. Finally, the policy is great because it requires and fosters trust between the students and the DOS. They give us fair policy and trust us to drink, we drink responsibly and trust them to be fair. This trust, however, has been threatened by the DOS for the past several years.

Lets be honest though, DOS calls the shots not us. The only reason this symbiotic trust exists is because they allow it to. However, the shots theyve been calling as of late have been threatening that trust in my mind, and when the trust starts to disappear, the students feel less obligation to fulfill their end of the bargain (safe, on campus drinking) disappears. Why do I feel they have been threatening the trust? One we see obviously, the constant empty-threat emails. You dont make empty threats in a trusting relationship, you make forthcoming and realistic emails. Being forthcoming and realistic wont scare people into drinking less as the DOS would like, but it will help foster the trust, which I believe is better in the long term. Second, this is less visible, but the DOS has been strong-arming the student body more and more. I threw a lot of parties while I was there, and towards the end I started getting some serious bullshit excuses as for why we couldnt throw a party in this place/at the time/with that theme whatever. It was shit. There was never any rational behind it, just Jim telling me “Dean Huang doesnt want me to let this happen.” I felt like I was being irrationally controlled big time. Here’s a great example: after weeks of planning and hundreds of dollars spent, the DOS cancelled jello wrestling last year hours before the event. They knew what was going on, this party has been thrown for years, yet hours before the party, they decided it was inappropriate. Agree with them? I dont even care, to wait that late to cancel it was disrespectful to the people who put all the time and money into it, and it was irrational. That is what I mean by strong-arming.

The CMC student body needs to send a message to the DOS that they are starting to see whats up and they dont like it. If DOS continues its current strategy, they will be seriously threatening the trust that allows our school to have such a great policy. I dont mean that to sound like a threat. I dont expect someone to lead a coup if jello wrestling doesnt happen, the coup will simply happen naturally. As the party scene gets lamer and lamer, more and more people will move off campus and/or party in LA. As the campus gets more dry policy, people will start drinking in their rooms more and alcohol poisonings will go up. A drier (or at least seemingly drier) campus is better for our reputation, but at what cost? I would be very interested to hear any comments on these thoughts if anyone actually read this whole thing. Why you would have bothered to read it, I dont know, youre in college, you should be out drinking. Cheers.