http://news.stanford.edu/2016/08/22/stanford-updates-student-alcohol-policy/
Basically, no hard alcohol at on-campus parties, except mixed drinks at parties hosted by 100% graduate student organizations or residences.
Also, no containers >= 750 mL of distilled liquor may be kept in undergraduate student residences.
Note that 100% of frosh and 92% of all undergraduates at Stanford live on campus.
Student reception of the policy is VERY negative if anyone is wondering.The running joke (yes, in poor taste) is that Stanford recruited Brock Turner to re-write their alcohol policy. Interesting timing that such a policy change follows a high profile case that Turner tried to blame on alcohol. Solution to rape? Ban alcohol.
It’s been called discriminatory against lower income students as well (you can buy more expensive smaller bottles of hard alcohol but not larger cheaper ones) and Stanford has an additional wonderfully controversial article talking about the dangers of alcohol to women: https://alcohol.stanford.edu/alcohol-drug-info/i-bet-you-didnt-know/female-bodies-and-alcohol?utm_source=AOL&utm_medium=readMore&utm_campaign=partner
Admins are implying that the policy was created after consulting with many parties including students, dorm staff and RFs (resident fellows who are often lecturers, profs, etc more middle-aged than college kids). They held meetings last year with people to announce their plans for new policies. Despite overwhelming negative feedback they decided to go through with the change.
@Lagging, what alcohol policy do the students want to see?
Uh … Unlimited?
It sounds good in theory but I wonder if the effect would be to push kids to do even more secretive pre-gaming in their dorm rooms.
It sure will help the college to manage its responsibilities if some students binge drink against the rule and then cause accidents or commit crime.
Surely a lower income student can buy a huge bottle of vodka and pour it into several smaller ones?
@dstark A policy that promotes student safety and wellbeing above university “cracking down on drinking” image. These new changes are going to push drinking underground where dangers will go unchecked and problems wont be brought to staff’s attention. Friend passed out from drinking --> why risk getting them in trouble by alerting an RA? Sexually assaulted at a party after drinking hard alcohol- --> why risk reporting the assault if you could get in trouble for drinking.
Our policies now aren’t perfect, but if a student is drinking too much no one is concerned about approaching an RA because they know the RA isn’t going to try to get them in trouble. People drink with their doors open so dorm staff can make sure students are safe, bring water, and yes shut down parties if people are getting too drunk. The culture is very much around making sure everyone is safe. It was a big positive in choosing Stanford for me.
There are ways to change the policy without implicitly accepting sexual assault by focusing more on hard alcohol than the offenders. Better alcohol education as freshmen, ongoing alcohol education/refresher courses, addressing underlying issues of over-drinking (i.e. better addressing mental health issues of students), working with the students instead of alienating them by ignoring their concerns. I’m sure there are dozens more ways to change the current policy, but those are a few off the top of my head.
Fine idea.
As a practical matter (and despite what the law says), it de facto legalizes under 21 drinking for beer and wine. Which is what the actual law should be anyway. But makes under 21 booze verboten.
But to mean anything, Stanford needs to back it up with enforcement. Which means that a bottle of vodka or Fireball found in the dorms or at a party has to get treated in the same way that a stash of cocaine would be treated. Will be interesting to see if they follow through.
Dartmouth imposed a complete ban on hard alcohol a couple of years ago. The early data shows some improvement, but not as much as hoped for.
I wonder what people would say now about events like we used to have in Lower Sproul where there would be beer trucks with about 50 taps for free and the Greg Kihn band live? I suspect a lot of people on this site would act horrified.
@Lagging, thanks. I think Stanford is a fantastic school.
Are there numerous students who get blacked out drunk?
I am going to reword this. Is sexual assault an issue on campus?
Prohibition didn’t work in 1920 and it isn’t working with 18 to 21 year olds for the last 30 years. Lower the drinking age to 18 (as it is in almost every industrialized western country) and then strictly enforce drunk driving, public drunkenness, and disorderly conduct laws. Stop driving it underground. Let legal adults have a pitcher of beer at the campus tavern. Stop making forbidden fruit and the kids will stop front loading on liquor.
^Also, educate students on watching out for each other and encourage, establish and fund programs that foster such monitoring.
@youcee, I went to Cal. No. I would not be horrified. 
Numerous? Definitely not. Some? Absolutely and more so on the row than in dorms. It’s hard to guess blacked out rates but news of a transport travels quickly. In my ~90 person freshman dorm we had maybe 3 people that year transported due to alcohol. When I lived on the row we averaged 1-2 transports per year. In another one of my dorms with over 100 people we didn’t have a single alcohol transport. The students were all fine afterwards and if anything people are sometimes a bit quick to call a transport when maybe it’s not necessary, but it’s all part of safety being the biggest focus.
Yes - although it’s certainly not a problem limited to Stanford. It’s hard enough for people to come forward about assaults in college (even with multiple witnesses it can lead to practically nothing - Brock Turner) and adding the risk of facing consequences when reporting assault is just a bad idea. Reminds me a bit of the countries in the news where you hear about women reporting being raped and getting charged with drinking alcohol or sex outside of marriage.
Binge drinking and sexual assault are issues at virtually all colleges in the US and Stanford’s not immune. Compared to many schools I’d estimate that the amount of people binge drinking is lower but I’m unsure if there’s data on it. Stanford could handle both issues better.
@snarlatron - I couldn’t agree more!!!
@Lagging, thanks. I appreciate your responses.
Other schools with some kind of hard alcohol ban include UVA, ND, WUSTL, Purdue and many schools in the frozen northeast (Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams, Bates, Colgate, Bowdoin).
I remember reading of the days when Stanford, as well as any part of Palo Alto that was within 1 mile of the campus, was “dry” -no liquor in any store at all.
Of course those were the days when most students did not have cars and did not get off campus much.
And I dont think it had much of an effect on the kids who had older friends to buy them booze.
But it was much harder for students to get booze easily.
Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…
@snarlatron , YES. The lower drinking age, and resultant relaxed attitude about alcohol, is one of the main reasons my D18 has Canadian universities at the top of her list.