To the editor: Thank you Stanford Daily for your Aug. 29 editorial “New alcohol policy will cause more harm than good.”

Stanford’s alcohol policy update invites further conversation about student health and well-being on campus. Yet, for all the importance of dialogue on alcohol, this policy also must clearly state that alcohol is not the cause of sexual assault. As is currently written, the policy potentially exculpates perpetrators like Brock Turner, who have offered to lecture university students against “college drinking and promiscuity” rather than publicly acknowledging his own responsibility for the sexual assault, which he committed and which ended his studies at Stanford University.

Excessive alcohol is a public health risk. So is sexual assault. The former is not the cause of the latter. Excessive alcohol consumption must be addressed without blaming drinking for sexual assault.

– Ruth Starkman, Ph.D., R.N.

 

To the editor: Your article “New policy restricts hard alcohol” described well the complexity of the issue of alcohol abuse on our nation’s campuses. As a professor who has researched alcohol and drinking for over 40 years, I can attest that this is a difficult, multifaceted undertaking.

While universities are to be commended for dealing with this issue head-on, I offer one important caution to university officials. Policies should treat all forms of alcohol — beer, wine and spirits — equally. Banning spirits products as “hard alcohol” while permitting beer and wine is misguided. It sends a dangerous message to college students that there is “soft” alcohol and there is “hard” alcohol.

As we teach in science class, alcohol is alcohol. A standard drink of beer, wine and distilled spirits each contains the same amount of absolute alcohol: six-tenths of 1 ounce. Very simply, there is no beverage of moderation, only behaviors of moderation.

– David J. Hanson, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Sociology

State University of New York, Potsdam

 

To the editor: I was disheartened by the Sept. 26 article “Mixed responses to alcohol policy in residential staff training.” It is clear from this article that enforcement of Stanford’s new, flawed alcohol policy will be iffy at best.

Simply prohibiting containers of hard alcohol 750 mL and larger is not the solution to college binge drinking. As an alumna, mother of an alumna and member of the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility’s National Advisory Board for over a decade, I would like to offer some thoughts on this issue.

Without question, alcohol abuse and, particularly, binge drinking — which has recently declined but still remains at an unacceptable rate of 35 percent of students — are serious concerns for the college community. We have discovered that strategies aimed directly at student concerns and involving student input have the most effect on student drinking behavior.

In April, President Hennessy wrote a letter outlining his plan for finding a solution to dangerous alcohol consumption on campus. I was encouraged to read that the administration would seek student involvement in finding a solution. But, as this article makes clear, there is no unified support of the policy or firm plan for enforcement.

So why is Stanford’s new alcohol policy a bad idea that the entire campus can’t get behind?

In the words of one RA quoted in the article, “It’s hard enough convincing people you’ve done something for their own good when it’s justified, like under the old policy. It will be a lot harder when, at the end of the day, it’s just the stricter policy and there’s no research.”

The suggestion that the consumption of hard alcohol is somehow more damaging than beer or wine on campuses is not supported by any national data. Truth is, a drink is a drink — whether that’s a shot, a glass of wine or a beer.

But don’t take it from me. Experts are skeptical of a hard alcohol ban, too. A March 4, 2015 article in The Dartmouth describes numerous experts’ reactions to a hard alcohol ban at Dartmouth University. Experts believe this ban is unrealistic because eliminating large bottles of hard liquor does not prevent the potential harm students could experience from drinking other types of alcohol, and it could drive problem drinking underground where there is no control or oversight.

With 86 percent of student residential staff members surveyed not in favor of the policy, it’s improbable the policy will be enforced. There’s no doubt college drinking is an issue that needs to be addressed, but the bottom line is this — Stanford needs a student-led cultural shift that the entire campus can get behind.

-Lisa Graham Keegan, ’81