Spring Fling minus the alcohol, Winter Bash ticketed and shifted to an off-campus location, the Naked Quad Run (NQR) no more.
Over the past two years, the administration has moved to tackle a perceived rise in alcohol abuse among students by changing major campus-wide events associated with excessive alcohol consumption.
The administration's measures mirror those being taken by university officials around the country, and Director of Alcohol and Health Education Ian Wong believes they work.
University President Lawrence Bacow this month announced that NQR would no longer occur. In its place, the university will embrace a new tradition selected through a competition announced this month by student leaders. As of yesterday, they had received about 15 submissions through the contest, according to senior Sarah Habib, co-chair of the Programming Board.
NQR and Spring Fling have in recent years shifted away from their original focuses, Wong said, and are now principally opportunities for a large number of students to get drunk together.
During these events, students who do not usually abuse alcohol push their limits, resulting in higher rates of intoxication and greater numbers of undergraduates reaching local emergency rooms, he said.
The university's changes to major events have made an impact, Wong said.
After the number of calls Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) received during 2009's Spring Fling overwhelmed local emergency services and resulted in a so-called mass casualty incident, the administration adopted a university steering committee's recommendation to ban alcohol from the event.
The decision was widely successful, according to Wong and Stacey Sperling, a physician at Health Service who is the medical director of TEMS. The rate of alcohol-related transports dropped so "immensely" during last year's Spring Fling that it made the days around the celebration seem like a regular weekend at Tufts, Sperling said.
The same happened with Winter Bash, Wong and Sperling said. After the university moved the event off-campus and limited entry, fewer alcohol abuse situations occurred, they said.
"We're seeing the problems we saw beforehand going down," Wong said. Across the country, university officials have taken action to address student events that have increasingly become associated with alcohol and violence.
At the University at Albany-SUNY, drunken student rioting during the city's March 12 pre-St. Patrick day celebrations resulted in thousands of dollars of damage and tarnished the institution's reputation, according to University at Albany spokesman Karl Luntta.
Officials preemptively suspended the university's annual springtime Fountain Day celebration, foreseeing similar problems.
"While Fountain Day continues to be a source of school pride, there remains a contingent of students who use this day as an excuse to promote excessive alcohol consumption that compromises everyone's safety," the university president, George Philip, wrote to students in an email.
Fountain Day, like NQR, began as a school tradition in the 1970s. As it grew, the student government and university pitched in to officially organize it and provide entertainment, food and security, according to Luntta.
Safety was only part of the university's decision to suspend Fountain Day, Luntta said. Liability concerns, along with the detrimental effect of rowdy student behavior, also played a part, he said.
Other institutions have dealt with similar issues. Illinois State University has warned students against excessive drinking at Fool's Fest, an upcoming April Fool's Day gathering.
The president of the University of Connecticut announced a one-year moratorium on a weekend of pre-exam partying known as Spring Weekend after a student died and over 80 people were arrested during last year's festivities.
Over a decade ago, officials at Princeton University shut down the school's "Nude Olympics," an unofficial gathering of sophomores who streaked across campus to commemorate the first snowfall of the year; it, too, had become associated with excessive drinking.
A Princeton report in 1999 cited excessive drinking, slippery surfaces, groping, demeaning treatment of staff and other problems with the event.
Princeton spokeswoman Emily Aronson said that, to her knowledge, no similar event had emerged since then.
"Many students have only a vague notion of what was once an infamous tradition," a writer for The Daily Princetonian wrote on the 10-year anniversary of the event's end.
Meanwhile, the University at Albany, like Tufts, is looking for ideas for a new, safer tradition, Luntta said.
Tufts' desire to recast school-wide traditions is less about alcohol and more about ensuring that the tradition itself is a step in the right direction, according to Wong.
"You can't just turn off the tap, per se," Wong said, explaining that students who normally drink heavily will most likely continue to do so anyway.
The trick, he said, is influencing those who decide to drink solely because they see NQR and other big events as big drinking nights.
"You have to make it more into an event that doesn't focus more on alcohol," he said.
Wong, who meets with students charged with alcohol violations, said he sees cases that differ from the norm after events like Spring Fling and NQR.
"A lot of times I see students who don't have a big alcohol problem, they just got caught up in these events," Wong said.
University President-Elect Anthony Monaco said he backed Bacow's decision to end NQR and that he planned to address alcohol abuse when he arrived in Medford this summer.
"He spoke to me about the reasons for his decision," Monaco said of Bacow in an email. "The event was a tragedy waiting to happen. It is time to move on and create new traditions that do not endanger the lives of our students."
As for those who attempt to challenge the administration's decision and run NQR next year, Monaco said it was as yet unclear how the university would respond.
"I understand that Dean [of Student Affairs Bruce] Reitman will be discussing the policy and enforcement of the ending of the NQR with the Committee on Student Life," he added. "I will await their recommendations before making any decisions."
Reitman did not respond to e-mails requesting comment for this article.
