Anna, a member of the class of 2016 who said she drank almost every weekend this past year, said she believes some freshmen feel pressured to “load up on hard alcohol” before going out, for fear that they will not be able to find a drink after leaving their rooms. She pointed to February’s freshman formal as an example of an event where students pre-gamed “really hard.”
“A lot of freshmen are inexperienced drinkers when they come here, and sadly the culture here tends to be shots,” Crimson Yard freshmen resident dean Catherine R. Shapiro said. “The problem with that is that they hit your system so fast that students can end up putting themselves in situations that are pretty scary.”
AN UPPERCLASSMAN POLICY
When in 2011 the College decided to review its policy governing student drinking habits, it held a series of meetings throughout the dorms to solicit student feedback on existing rules. These meetings were sparsely attended—only six students went to the discussion designated for freshmen, four of whom were representatives from the Undergraduate Council.
Despite poor turnout, someone brought up the idea that unsafe drinking habits form during freshman year at almost every meeting.
When a committee drafted a revised policy just a few months later, it introduced new regulations that banned high-risk drinking games while also reversing a rule created in spring 2011 that had banned mixed drinks from House formals.
But those changes were specific to upperclassmen. Despite the repeated articulation of a freshman problem, the alcohol policy did not include guidelines governing the Yard.
“The new policy wasn’t really new for the Yard at all,” Dingman said. “I was part of lots of conversations about it, but it really impacted the Houses more—almost entirely.”
According to Rakesh Khurana, Cabot House Master and chair of the alcohol policy committee, the policy was drafted with the understanding that the nature of alcohol use differed between upperclassmen and freshmen. Rather than try to create a “one size fits all” policy, Khurana said, the committee wanted to address the fact that freshmen and upperclassmen face different sets of issues when it comes to alcohol consumption. Administrators never intended to ignore freshmen, Khurana said.
“There are people who are old enough to drink in the upperclass Houses. That creates a very different type of situation,” he said.
The FDO plays the largest role in addressing alcohol use in the Yard. Its approach, Dingman said, focuses on education, rather than discipline. For example, the College this past year developed a new, Harvard-specific alcohol education program for incoming freshmen. “Harvard Proof” will be used for the first time with the class of 2017.
But administrators and students both said that while Harvard can focus on education, it is limited in the ways it can address alcohol use in the freshman class because of the legal drinking age of 21.
Anna said that while in an ideal world Harvard would find steps to encourage healthier drinking habits among freshmen, such as serving alcohol at freshman formal to discourage pre-gaming, she recognizes that the majority of freshmen are under 21, preventing the College from condoning alcohol use in the first-year class.
“They’re sort of limited in their power,” she said. “I think part of the problem is just the national laws that prevent Harvard from creating a safer environment.”
—Laya Anasu and Hana N. Rouse contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.