The college life can be defined by many students with the party life within their reach, and by extension the amount of alcohol they can get their hands on. IPFW Student Housing curbs this problem by maintaining a dry campus – a no tolerance policy that affects legal aged students just as much as the under 21 set.
This policy has a tendency to create contention with housing students. A poll of 39 students found that 21 students, or 53.8 percent, believe that if a student is of legal drinking age, they should be allowed to store and consume alcohol in their dorm rooms. Conversely, 38.4 percent of the individuals polled believed that alcohol had no place in campus housing regardless of age.
What many students who feel this way don’t seem to realize is that the policy is not a personal vendetta against those who decide to drink alcohol, and that if it bothers them to such an extent, they don’t have to put up with it.
Student housing is a privately run set of dorms that is responsible for about 1,300 students. Housing employees must be sure that students are safe and that they follow the law. For this reason, it isn’t possible for them to allow legal aged students to possess alcohol on campus.
“The rule isn’t really there for people who are of age. It’s more of a deterrent against people who are underage abusing the ease to get alcohol if older people made it available,” said English major Gentry Trimble.
If a 21-year-old student has alcohol in a room that they share with an underage student, housing officials would have no way of making sure that the legal drinker is the only one consuming it.
Those students who are living in housing and choose to drink are free to continue doing so – in bars or in the homes of others off-campus. If they don’t like forfeiting their right to possess alcohol in their rooms, then they should remember that they don’t have to live in campus housing. They are completely free to choose a living arrangement that doesn’t bar their ability to own alcohol.
Some might cite the point that underage students who are truly determined to drink will do so regardless of the housing policy. Student Housing is aware of this, and takes care of it on an individual basis. Changing their policy and opening themselves up to an onslaught of this behavior, however, can not be justified by the few who break the rules.
