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Law School Enacts Scary And Stupid Alcohol Prohibitions

A law school embarrasses itself with a childish alcohol policy.

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GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL — STUDENT BAR ASSOCATION — UPDATE ON EVENTS WITH ALCOHOL

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For those of you who may not know, the GW Center for Alcohol and other Drug Education (CADE) oversees all events with alcohol hosted by GW student groups. This office is part of the overall university; it is not an office within law school. CADE is responsible for developing and overseeing the policies governing events hosted by student groups that have alcohol. Last semester, the CADE office revised its master policy governing events with alcohol. The SBA was involved with every step of the process and advocated first for an individual graduate student policy, and when it was clear that this would not be possible for policies that would allow for maximum flexibility for the organizations within the law school. Ultimately although some aspects of the policy were changed favorably for graduate students, other aspects of the policy added costs and additional planning requirements for events with alcohol.

Unfortunately, over the past several months there have been a number of violations at events hosted by law school organizations, including improper and late filing of mandated approval forms. Currently the SBA is the only officially registered GW student organization. As a result, all student events with alcohol are technically hosted by the SBA which is ultimately responsible for the submission of paperwork and ensuring compliance with the rules. Recently a Thirsty Thursday event with material featuring alcohol was promoted to the undergraduate student body, a major violation of CADE policy. As a result of the multiple violations, yesterday members of the SBA Executive Board met with the CADE leadership team and University officials to discuss how future law school events would be handled.

Given the magnitude of the most recent violation and the history of minor violations this year the University has decided to place sanctions on the SBA. The final sanction imposed by the University was to place a limit on the SBA of 7-10 alcoholic events for the remainder of this semester. Each event must be individually approved, first by the Dean’s office, and then by the University. While this may likely allow us to preserve some SBA and student group events with alcohol, we will be unable to continue Thirsty Thursday and Bar Review on a regular basis. This also means that student groups which intended to host events with alcohol may be unable to do so. The SBA has already reached out to the various student organizations to obtain a list of all proposed events so that they may be considered for inclusion by the Deans office.

The SBA will be submitting a list of all SBA and student group events with alcohol to the Deans office for review this weekend. The decision on which events will be selected is up to the Deans office and is outside of the SBA’s control. Note that this does not affect the ability of law school departments (such as the Career Office or Alumni and Development Office) from hosting events with alcohol, nor does it prohibit law firms and other non-GW affiliated organizations from hosting events where GW Law Students are invited. Thus, any career or networking related event with alcohol, so long as it is not specifically hosted or co-hosted by the SBA or a law student organization, is permitted.

On the positive side, this does free up SBA funding for non-alcohol related events. We will be working closely with the SBA senate to determine the best use of these funds. The SBA will develop and propose alternative programming and weekly events that do not include alcohol, such as potentially having better food available at Thirsty Thursday, providing more days with free coffee, expansion of Wellness Wednesdays, etc. If you have any recommendations, requests, or ideas, please email them to us and we would be happy to consider them.

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I know that this is not the best news, but I can assure you that we as the SBA did the best we could under the circumstances. While I believe that we should advocate for a CADE policy that better accounts for law students, the CADE policy as it is right now is the rule governing our student groups, and we must continue to comply with it. We will use our remaining time this semester to plan the best events we can for the student body, as well as enact clear policies and guidelines for groups so that we avoid any issues in the future.

The SBA will be meeting with the Deans office on Monday, if you have any comments or concerns you would like brought to the attention of the Deans please send them to [redacted] by Sunday evening at 5pm so that we can bring them to the meeting on Monday.

Earlier: Wherein Law Students Try To Bar Crawl Like College Students

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