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BY MARY PRAGER

In print | October 2, 2008

In the spring of last year, an anonymous donor set up a substantial fund to support non-alcoholic social programming at Swarthmore. Since then, the Parrish Parlor programs have become a fixture of campus life. So far, Parrish Parlor Parties has hosted a number of non-alcoholic events, including a chocolate night featuring a fountain.

According to Assistant Director of Student Life Kelly Wilcox ’97, the pilot program was launched to accommodate the needs of students who prefer to socialize in non-alcoholic settings. “People wanted to meet people, make friends, not feel isolated and feel that there were other individuals who wanted a [non-alcoholic] social scene,” Wilcox said.

Assistant Dean for Residential Life Rachel Head also noted the trend toward increasing the number of dry events on campus. “There’s definitely an emphasis on identifying alternatives to alcohol programming on the weeknights and the weekends,” Head said, adding that the administration relies heavily on RAs to inform students about the different social venues – both wet and dry – that exist on campus. “The RAs play a critical role as serving as the mentors and the advisors to students, to help the attendees at [dry] programs, to help facilitate those programs, and to help show that there are alternatives to going to a party where there is alcohol every single day of the week,” Head said.

The Parrish Parlor Parties are “a response to students’ desires, some of which are expressed by parents,” Associate Dean for Student Life Myrt Westphal said. “We are able to have [the parties] because a generous donor gave us a chunk of money to help support the alcohol-free scene.” The Parlor Parties take place on Fridays and Saturdays as an alternative to the many alcohol-related events that are typically sponsored on those nights. Student groups and individual students can volunteer to host Parlor Parties and receive funding to do so by proposing a theme to Kelly Wilcox. Each party requires two attendant baristas who are paid to oversee the event, much like Party Associates.

Last year, Wilcox created the Social Scene Advisory Committee after a conference on alcohol and its place in campus life. The committee consists of roughly thirty student representatives from a variety of student social, religious and athletic groups. “The first couple of meetings … centered around the need for spaces and events that weren’t centered around alcohol,” Wilcox said. The SSAC ran a Parlor Parties pilot program last spring to address these issues. The program consisted of free themed events on Friday nights including make-your-own-sushi night, Mexican night and an open mike night. “We decided to expand it to Thursday and Saturday, and to be respectful to different religious or cultural obligations [we decided] to stagger the nights, so Friday nights changed to Thursday and Saturday,” Wilcox said.

The role of the SSAC is to advise the college on “what’s right and wrong about the social scene,” Westphal said. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t actively jump in and be baristas [for Parrish Parlor Parties] … It’s sort of a way to have student input into things that the Student Life Team is interested in doing,” she said. This year’s committee is comprised of RAs, students who served on the committee last year and Student Council-appointed individuals,” Westphal said.

Wilcox stressed that the administration is not seeking to replace all events featuring alcohol with dry parties. “It’s not a mandate by any stretch,” Wilcox said. “The money was there … we asked the questions and the students told us that they wanted more dry spaces and dry events,” she said. “I think it’s an indication of campus sentiment and desire. I think the fact that it’s been so student-driven adds merit and weight to it,” Wilcox said.

The college alcohol policy has at times been the subject of intense debate. In recent years, the administration has clarified its stance on alcohol consumption, affirmed Worth Health Center’s policy of providing more comprehensive care for dangerously intoxicated students and expanded the presence of non-alcohol-related activities and spaces on campus. All of these developments have intensified the debate over what is and what should be the role of alcohol on campus.

Compared with the policies of peer institutions, the administration’s stance on alcohol consumption is objectively relaxed, although the administration does not officially condone alcohol use. In recent years, it enforced stricter regulations on budgetary appropriations to ensure that funds allocated for student-run social activities are not utilized to purchase alcoholic beverages.

The administration is particularly concerned with underage drinking because of the legal ramifications that students could face if detained by local authorities. Because of the difficulty of monitoring the expenditures of every student group, the deans count on students to exercise discretion in their use of college funding and avoid “putting the school in a liability bind” by using the money to purchase alcohol, Westphal said. Trusting students’ judgment in this matter is consistent with the college’s general philosophy of treating its students like adults. “We want you to understand that if you drink alcohol, it’s on you: funding, consequences and all,” Westphal said.

The Parlor Parties, however, are not the product of concrete policy changes but rather, an experiment in social programming on campus. The Women’s Resource Center board members’ recent decision to convert the WRC into a dry space constitutes the only explicit policy change regarding alcohol so far this year. Neither the college administration nor Worth Health Center has enacted significant policy changes. “If there was one policy change, it was that incoming freshman had to do AlcoholEdu last year,” Westphal said.

The Worth Health Center, under director Beth Kotarski, has been refining its internal policies regarding overnight care for students. “Technically, [the policy] hasn’t changed … It was looser before. It still [complied with] Pennsylvania standards, but it wasn’t as well-defined as I am comfortable with. Being an overnight healthcare facility that sees patients 24 hours a day, we have to adhere to certain standards and policies,” Kotarski said, adding that she has made an effort to enforce more rigorous compliance with these standards since her appointment as director last September.

In particular, Kotarski stressed the need for Worth to maintain a reasonable nurse-to-patient ratio, taking into account the particular conditions of patients and the comfort level of the Resident Nurse on duty at night, when intoxicated students are most commonly admitted for overnight supervision. “It is ultimately up to the RN who is caring for patients. We have seven beds, but we never are able to have seven students over night with just one nurse. That ratio would be an unacceptable ratio, so we would have to bring in another nurse if that was the case,” Kotarski said.

Student Body President Yongjun Heo ’09 said that he supported Kotarski’s efforts to increase the nurse-to-patient ratio. “I think that’s naturally a safer option because … it’s not safe for one nurse to be overseeing more than two or three student at a time. Sending them to the hospital if there’s a need is the best option, so they have the best care,” Heo said, adding that it is never the college’s intention to “get students into any sort of trouble.” “We just want to make sure people are safe,” Heo said.

However, several students have expressed concern that neither the college nor Worth Health Center has responded appropriately to particular instances of intoxication. Relating her negative impressions of the college’s response to a friend’s intoxication earlier this year, Amelia Sizemore ’09 said, “I have no qualms about going to the health center for other reasons, but it is not a resource­­­­ that students feel they can turn to in a time when their health is at risk because they do not feel respected."

Others find the college’s response to situations to be better than the alternative. “Receiving medical treatment is never particularly pleasant, but I’m glad that the college provides these resources because the consequences [of seeking help from Worth] are certainly preferable to those one would have to face outside of the Swarthmore College setting,” Michelle Walters ’12 said.

Unlike the social calendars of previous semesters, Pub Nite was postponed for the first few weeks of the school year. According to Heo, Pub Nite’s conspicuous absence was probably deliberate. “I think the reason was to make sure that there’s a period of adjustment, especially for incoming students, so that [they] especially don’t get bombarded with this culture or environment where there is alcohol,” Heo said.

Whatever the cause may be, the administration noted fewer alcohol-related incidents in the first few weeks of school than were reported last year. “We’re hoping people are making better decisions, but it may be because we had a lot of activities planned. We had Welcome Weekend, we started Parlor Parties, and we’ve had really good attendance at those,” Westphal said.

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