Watching the behavior of the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) during last week's short−lived 4/20 celebration on the Tisch Library roof, I couldn't help but be reminded of a vaudevillian song and dance. Like a well−choreographed performance, TUPD surrounded revelers, and at the strike of 4:20 p.m., as joints were lit, they promptly moved in. The atmosphere was almost calm as TUPD officers summarily collected IDs from smokers, all the while ignoring the prodigious amount of smoke emanating from crowds around, near but not on top of, Tisch Library. Such a spectacle highlights the ludicrous state of Tufts' drug and alcohol policy and its effects on students. As the year winds down and Tufts prepares to find a new president at its reins, it is hard to see the current administration's drug and alcohol policies as anything but a failure. University President Lawrence Bacow's administration has pursued policies that encourage a damaging relationship with the student body and obscure the actual problems that exist in Tufts' drinking and drug culture. The motivations for these policies are difficult to square with an earnest and primary concern for students' welfare. Moreover, in the process of legitimizing these failed policies, Bacow and his administration have devalued essential student organizations like the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and the Daily.
The administration's policies toward drugs and alcohol reflect more concern with public use of illegal substances than addressing problematic consumption among the student body. Widespread enjoyment of pot within sight and smell of the sheriffs of Jumbo is only one example of the perversity of Tufts' policies. The cancellation of the Naked Quad Run (NQR) demonstrated the administration's skewed priorities because, like 4/20, the school seemed more committed to distancing itself from mass student insobriety than attempting meaningful change. Canceling NQR targeted a 40−year−old tradition without addressing the more fundamental issue of frequent alcohol−induced hospitalizations of students year−round. Instead of trying to understand or fix the drinking culture at Tufts, Bacow went for the easier route of canceling that culture's most visible expression, effectively pushing dangerous binge drinking further out of sight. Such obsession with appearance rather than reality has been further reflected in the school's tightening of security at events as diverse as Tufts Dance Collective to Winter Bash. Such security merely insures that drinking must go on away from prying eyes. Moreover, strict no−re−entry policies ensure that whatever drinking is done, it must suffice for the whole event, leading to binge drinking. It is hard to see how such policies truly help the student body.
More than pushing binge drinking out of public view, the administration's contorted policies toward medical attention put students further at risk. The vague and badly publicized disciplinary system for underage drinking has only been further clouded by recent revisions. The alcohol policy remains badly misunderstood and still attaches disciplinary consequences to seeking medical attention. As such, Tufts students are notable not for how much they drink compared to other college students, but how much they resist medical attention under any circumstances. Bacow's administration has made the Tufts drug and alcohol policy a creation worthy of Frankenstein. The end result is a monster cobbled together with little thought or justification and posing a serious risk to the Tufts community. One wonders at the lack of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks.
This lack of protest, too, is a sign of the damage wrought by this administration's failings. In its efforts to legitimize these botched policies, Bacow's administration has used the TCU Senate and the Daily as mouthpieces rather than representatives of student opinion. Undermining such student organizations is at once obvious and upsetting. The Daily has remained notably uncritical of the administration despite serious concerns over Tufts' past actions. Setting aside concerns over drug and alcohol policy, the Daily has remained silent or tepidly supportive of the administration on a whole host of issues at Tufts, from the closure of the REZQuad Café to the Jumboleaks scandal. I fault no student at the Daily for this stance, but the lack of critical writing is apparent.
The TCU Senate for its part has raised no substantive public break with administration in recent memory. Its behavior when NQR was canceled was indicative: Far from opposing the administration, it coordinated a contest for a replacement tradition in a fashion that was as patronizing as it was hokey. Student senators like Logan Cotton must be applauded for bringing attention to this submissiveness, but it has yet to result in action (for his truly admirable op−ed, "Cancellation of NQR shows lack of support from TCU Senate," March 28, 2011). The TCU Senate acts more to coordinate administrative policies with the student body than to represent student concern or objection. Both the Daily and the TCU Senate have been used by the administration to state policy and imitate student consent. Bacow's announcement of NQR's cancellation in the Daily served to merely state policy being implemented. His op−ed seemed more aimed at silencing dissent than encouraging discussion or meaningful student input. Neither the TCU Senate nor the Daily has formally acknowledged the events of 4/20 (other than Monday's op−ed "4/20 crackdown highlights administrative hostility"), despite a student being tackled by TUPD that evening in tactics becoming all too frequent and of questionable necessity.
In writing these observations, I do not aim to disparage any student or administrator personally but rather to note that policies enacted by this administration are deeply worrying. I fear that continued silence on these issues will allow these policies to remain well after Bacow leaves the Hill this spring. It will be interesting to see if needed reform on drug and alcohol will materialize in Bacow's absence, or whether the administration will still be targeting scarecrows. But the real question is what role students should play in such needed reform. Assent is not a role but an abdication of one.
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