Alumni

• Mohr Student Center

First Call

Why and how Lake Forest College plans to serve alcohol on campus.

By Beth Tyler

Anyone who reads these pages regularly knows that Lake Forest College is building a new student center. The Mohr Student Center will provide much needed recreational space for our student body, which has grown almost 50 percent in the past ten years. The Center will boast ping-pong and pool tables, a snack bar, a dance floor, a large-screen television lounge and many other amenities desired by today’s students. In addition, it will provide for service of beer and wine at designated times to students 21 and older. “Beer and wine?” you ask, incredulously. Given all the press about serious alcohol-related problems on college campuses, why we would want to have a College-supported venue that serves alcohol to our students? 

It may seem counterintuitive to create a place on campus where beer and wine are sold, even to legal aged adults. The frequent response to increased alcohol abuse on college campuses seems to be to restrict the availability of alcohol. Many institutions have chosen that path, often to the point of going “dry.” That approach, however, equates any drinking at all with irresponsible drinking, when the majority of adults who choose to drink do so responsibly.

Approximately two-thirds of American adults consume alcohol, mostly for positive reasons and with few if any negative repercussions, according to Dwight B. Heath, professor emeritus of anthropology at Brown University. His study concludes that societies that forbid drinking for many years have young people who drink “too much, too fast, or for inappropriate and unrealistic reasons,” and other studies show that cultural groups who use alcohol as part of their daily lives develop attitudes and habits that foster responsible drinking.

In other words, it’s not drinking per se, but irresponsible drinking that we should strive to eliminate. Just as prohibition did not eliminate irresponsible alcohol use, but rather drove all alcohol use underground, alcohol education programs that demonize alcohol by equating all drinking with abuse and encouraging complete avoidance of alcohol are ineffective. Making campuses “dry” doesn’t eliminate irresponsible drinking—it merely pushes it underground. A better way to address irresponsible drinking, I believe, is to create a controlled environment where legal drinking can take place in the context of education and programming to help students make smart decisions about the role that alcohol will play in their lives.

To put it another way, educators should be willing to tackle the college drinking problem in the best way we know how—through education.

With the Mohr Student Center, we have an opportunity to instill in our students the following attitudes and beliefs:

• that individuals who choose to drink must develop skills to manage their alcohol consumption responsibly;
• that alcohol, if misused, has serious negative consequences;
• that positive drinking involves moderate consumption and entails meaningful activities in addition to alcohol consumption; and
• that moderate alcohol consumption can be beneficial within an overall positive life structure and social environment, including group supports, other healthful habits, and a purposeful and engaged lifestyle.

Because it will be open to all of our students, about 70 percent of whom are under 21, the pub in the Mohr Student Center will operate within strict guidelines to ensure that only legal-aged students are served and consume alcohol. We will have distinct student ID cards for students age 21 and older and a wristband system that lets the bartender know if the student is legal. Only Lake Forest College students, faculty, staff, and registered guests will be welcomed in. A campus security officer will monitor the lounge and underage students found drinking will be subject to College disciplinary procedures. In addition, we will require our servers, who will only sell one drink at a time, to be TIPS-trained (Training for Intervention ProcedureS). TIPS is a program that teaches servers, sellers, and consumers of alcohol to prevent intoxication, drunk driving, and underage drinking and to respond to students who abuse alcohol.

Lake Forest is following the lead of other peer colleges in our plans for the pub. The dean of students at Oberlin confirmed last year, for example, that “Oberlin does have a pub in the basement of the student union where we serve beer to of-age students most evenings of the week. Over time, I have come to regard this as a very good thing. It is a setting in which students can be socialized into responsible alcohol consumption in the context of other kinds of activity (rather than as an end in itself). In good weather, the student union rolls a beer cart onto the central academic quad on Friday afternoons and sells beer to students and others. Coming from Dartmouth, this initially made me apoplectic. I have come to regard it as a lovely tradition that serves our student community very well. I have never seen it abused—not once.”

Samuel J. Thios, the vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Denison University, was similarly positive about the facility that serves beer and wine in Denison’s student union. “Generally, the philosophy is that there is a place on campus where students of legal age can purchase beer or wine, and there is not a necessity to leave campus (i.e., drive) if one chooses to drink,” he wrote.

When I arrived at Lake Forest College in 2002, it was clear that students needed a large space for spontaneous social gatherings. It was clear, too, that our students needed to learn that drinking can be a safe activity when it is done in moderation and in the context of other activities. Federal and state laws that set the legal drinking age at 21 makes our challenge greater, but, rather than avoid the challenge altogether, we can provide an environment where we educate our students to make smart choices about drinking. Equally importantly, we can create a self-regulating community where irresponsible alcohol use and abuse will not be tolerated by anyone.

Beth Tyler is the dean of students at Lake Forest College.