“We know most of the people,” Taub says. “We have a feeling for who’s 21, and if we’re not sure we’ll ask them their name. People are pretty honest.”

Taub adds that Leverett House Master Howard Georgi is at most events to back them up.

“The Master is always there to support us,” Taub says. “He’ll have a beer. He knows everyone in the House and knows how old everyone is. [Students] don’t want to break the rules.”

Hawkins says the house committee has streamlined the carding process at Lowell events by simply not allowing any sophomores to drink. But that does not mean underage drinking is easily prevented, Hawkins says.

“One problem that we run into a little is that it’s difficult to stop a senior from getting a beer and giving it to a sophomore,” Hawkins says. “That can happen at an event with a BAT team, that can happen at a bar and that can happen at our Stein Club too.”

Laying Down the Law

The “BAT team” is an organization run by graduate students in Dudley House. For a fee, the team provides people to card students and supervise alcohol at parties.

When Mather reinstated Stein Club on a trial basis last semester, one of the Masters’ stipulations was that BAT would do the carding.

“We thought it was important to have BAT at Stein Club,” Mather Master Leigh Hafrey ’73 says. “Our feeling was it isn’t in the tutor job description to host Stein Club. It doesn’t send the same message to have ho-co checking IDs. It seemed to us a neutral way to make sure the rules were abided by.”

Jenine M. Ghani ’02, chair of the Mather House committee, says she understands Hafrey’s concerns.

“[The Masters] just want to make sure it’s not being used for the wrong reasons and Stein Club’s not an excuse for people to binge drink,” Ghani says. “They’re aware of the things Stein Club can turn into and the parties that have happened in Mather before. You want to take measures against it.”

Ghani also says it was worth the expense of paying the BAT squad $12.50 per hour to watch the keg so that the tutors were not put in a “weird position.”

But house committee chairs of other Houses, however, say that hiring BAT to supervise Stein Club events is counter to the mission of the club.

“It’s too expensive and it’s just more trouble than it’s worth,” says Amanda M. Mulfinger ’02, Cabot House committee co-chair. “Stein Club is a low-key event.”

While BAT mans some stein clubs and house committee members regulate alcohol at others, most Masters and committee chairs agree that tutors should not have the responsibility of enforcing the legal drinking age.