On that note, I think Undergraduate Council President Matt Mahan ’05 has the right idea with regard to his proposal of a “pancake breakfast,” the starches from which would serve to combat alcohol poisoning.

(It’s important to note here that Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd and Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II told The Crimson yesterday that they, in fact, came up with the pancake breakfast idea. Despite the fact that nothing piques my interest like a good council president vs. admininstration fight to the death, I’m not going to get in the middle of this mess, but I do have to say that if Kidd and McLoughlin did propose this idea, then I applaud them in the same manner.)

These types of proposals are mired in what I’ll dub “realism.” They are based upon the assumption that students will drink (some even to the Ted Kennedy or Boris Yeltsin levels) and, therefore, attempt to find ways to keep the risk of overconsumption, or alcohol poisoning, to a minimum.

It’s time for the College administrators to step up and adopt a more responsible policy than “out of tailgate sight, out of mind.” It’s time for those folks in University Hall to take a realistic view of the situation and enact policies which, rather than being token jabs at the perceived problem like the keg ban, actually show some regard for student safety.

But most of all, it’s time to realize that in the world of drinking, beer is not the enemy and instituting policies that either implicitly or explicitly combat its consumption can lead to more of the very problems which those restrictions sought to curtail.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.