ShareThisBy BILL SCHACKNER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, May 07, 2007
University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown students who want to drink hard liquor while showing collegiate pride can buy shot glasses bearing their school's name on the branch campus here.
The bookstore sells them for $3.99. It stocks beer posters, too.
The store even carries a poster of actor John Belushi, the word "COLLEGE" displayed over his chest, a nod to the 1978 "Animal House" movie that romanticized "party-till-you-drop" debauchery.
But all spring long, in a crackdown decried by some students as Big Brotherish, those same glasses and any poster advertising alcohol could mean a $50 fine if plainly visible in a dorm room from a window or hallway.
"The school can make money from them, but we can't display them where people can see them," said Tom Belli, 22, a junior from New Kensington, Pa. "It's a bit of a double standard."
And it's not the only student complaint as yet another college attempts to curb hard partying.
Under new rules, any student group at Johnstown throwing a weekend party with alcohol must submit a guest list by noon Thursday to an administrator who reviews it and places the guests' names on file indefinitely. Nothing stronger than beer can be brought to the parties, and no more than a six-pack per legal adult.
The school, which says it's had one too many close calls with alcohol poisoning, even takes a position on party snacks, saying non-salty food must be available all party long.
Campus officials make no apologies for the rules, hardly a prohibition but a stark change for the school's 3,100 students. Administrators point to early signs of success.
Johnstown, on paper anyway, used to have a policy that campus parties were alcohol-free, but it was rarely enforced, said Jerry Samples, vice president for academic and student affairs. So there was little control over consumption and underage drinking at rowdy parties that sometimes ballooned in size past fire-code limits.
Now, with the first semester under the new policy complete, incident reports suggest that vandalism is down, as are cases in which male students "get their beer muscles on with all the altercations and fights," said Jonathan Wescott, director of housing and residence life.
Far from being the thought police, the school is entitled to curb alcohol-related displays, including beer posters, in dorms that it owns if the wrong message is being sent, Samples said.
"You can't be a freshman and have a window full of empty beer cans," he said. "That's kind of counterintuitive to the law that says you can't drink unless you're 21 years old."
The policy is still evolving, Wescott said, and it may make sense to approach the bookstore about removing the shot glasses and other alcohol-related items. Nevertheless, say school officials, by adopting practices already used at some other schools, including Pitt's main campus, Pitt-Johnstown is keeping its students safer and reducing liability.
"It's been a shift in culture," Wescott said. "But it's one that had to be made."
Some students, though, remain unhappy, especially with the party rules.
They say smaller turnouts this spring show that students who are unable to get on a guest list are going home or elsewhere to party.
If colleges nationwide have not stopped dangerous partying, it isn't for lack of initiatives.
They have tried everything from random police patrols inside fraternity houses to marketing campaigns that tell students most of their peers do not drink excessively.
Sometimes changes follow a major embarrassment, a booze-fueled street disturbance after a football game or, as was the case with Duke University last year, a national media frenzy stemming from a party with lacrosse players and a stripper's charge of sexual assault.
Other times, schools gradually conclude that something is wrong with the campus culture when ambulances are a regular sight on big party weekends.
The University of Colorado at Boulder has instituted what students dubbed a "two-strike" policy in which a second alcohol-related offense as minor as holding an open container of beer can bring a semester-long suspension with no refund for tuition or fees.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst sees itself as an institution on the rise academically. So street disturbances and other party woes that cemented its "ZooMass" nickname clearly are out of sync with current goals.
Its efforts range from stepped-up municipal- and campus-police enforcement to letting landlords check if a student had disciplinary problems while living in a dorm, meaning an alcohol infraction could make it harder to rent off-campus.
But national data show the problem is hard to overcome, and even a school with elaborate plans can't necessarily stop a student on a weekend night from drinking himself into the hospital or worse.
"You can't give into those thoughts of futility," said UMass director of community relations Martha Nelson Patrick. "Where would we be if we weren't doing anything? I think it would be pretty grim."
(Bill Schackner can be reached at bschackner(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
