Drinking on Campus

There have been many issues concerning drinking on the SMU campus this year. There was a Task Force put together to give President Turned suggestions on what should be done to keep the drinking to a minimum and how to make drinking safer. President Turner recently decided which of these recommendations he will keep and which to be dismissed. He turned down having an on campus pub and to have parties on campus that will serve beer to people of age. I completely agree with this decision. Having a pub on campus is absolutely ridicules. People already complain about the public not taking SMU seriously and not holding its academics in high enough regard. Having a pub on campus would only further these opinions.
President Turner approved a mandatory attendance policy, increased classes on Fridays, limiting the number of courses a student can drop, every class having two hours of work for every hour spent in class, and all lower-division courses having finals. I do not believe that all of these recommendations will help. I know that I go out every Thursday when I have classes on Fridays. It is the business school that mainly does not have classes on Fridays and that lets the kids get jobs or internships that many of them wouldn’t have time to get. Teachers should be able to decide to give a lot of work or to have a final no matter what. It should not be up to the administration, rather the teachers.
Another approved recommendation was to not allow fraternities to have bus parties on the weekdays and limit them to only the weekends. Well, fraternities are not going to stop having parties on the weeknights so not having busses will only increase the drunk driving and therefore make it even more unsafe. While many of President Turner’s approvals will help the drinking problem on our campus some of them will only backlash so I just hope that the administration is prepared to deal with what comes from all of the changes. They have dealt with this problem very well and I think they will be able to deal with anything else us students throw at them.

To read the article from the Daily Campus click here