There’s a new drinking policy at University of Virginia Law School. It was promulgated without much fanfare, and is pretty limiting towards student organizations that want to serve drinks at their events. It does nothing to address the issue of alcoholism in the legal profession, and likely encourages drinking in secret, off-campus locations. But if it saves UVA from one embarrassing story about “students gone wild,” it’s probably a model that other schools will follow.
The Virginia Law Weekly broke the story, as it seems the administration didn’t do a lot to explain or promote this change to students and student organization leaders. Here’s the key part of the new policy:
In an effort to better manage the Law School calendar and events involving alcohol at the Law School, the Law School will require all student groups that would like to serve alcohol at an event during the fall semester to advise the Student Affairs Office by September 1, 2016 of the nature of the event, the alcohol planned and the approximate date of the event. The Law School will then evaluate the submissions and provide advance guidance as to whether the Law School will allow service of alcohol, subject to the submission and approval of the required alcohol approval form. If you do not submit your pre-approval request by September 1, 2016, you will not be permitted to serve alcohol at your event.
For the spring semester, the pre-approval request must be submitted to Student Affairs by January 15, 2017.
The Law School will evaluate the requests, taking into account the total number of proposed events involving alcohol over the course of the semester and in any given week, the nature of the proposed event, the number of events proposed by each organization, whether the event is a new event or one that is historically held at the Law School, and the past experiences with the event.
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For those playing along at home, September 1st is already behind us. We’re sitting here on Labor Day week, and student organizations are already expected to have planned out an entire semester’s worth of events. Let me tell you as a person who often speaks at law students events, it’ll be a couple of weeks before they even know what they want to do, much less who they can get to speak at their functions which will determine when those functions are held.
And if you are a 1L who wants to organize something, well, enjoy your Fresca. Despite being a grown-ass adult, capable of deciding to borrow a quarter-million dollars for your own education, this policy leaves you no time to plan anything but dry events for your first semester. You are kind of like a child with access to a line of credit.
There’s a larger problem here, as Law Weekly explains:
[T]he other obvious consequence of this policy change: driving student events off grounds. We urge the administration to consider the risks associated with such a trend; not only do we risk the fragmentation of the student experience into a maze of peripheral, underground events, but also the loss of the salutary influence of Law School facilities and regulations. Is drinking at Ivy Gardens before Bar Review really preferable to having the Thursday Night Keg?
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I get it, in this day and age where everybody has a camera phone and websites like Above the Law exist, it can be embarrassing for a university and a law school if on-campus student events get out of hand. With increased awareness over student drinking, and increased litigiousness on the issue as well, it is safer for a school to shift intoxicating events to off-campus locations when possible.
But that’s not better for the students. Look, if you are actually concerned about student drinking, and over-drinking, then you should want to keep your people on campus. On campus locales are a safe space. On-campus events increase he chances that people in need will receive medical attention. On-campus events are where peers can look out for other peers. I look back on my twenties and THANK GOD I was mainly blackout drunk on campus, where friends could help me, and fish me out of the bushes, and not steal my wallet and clothes.
The UVA policy ignores the reality of student organizations, and abdicates the school’s role in encouraging moderation. But the next time a UVA student gets drunk and makes a fool of himself, I suppose UVA can say “this incident took place at an off-campus event, not sanctioned by the law school.” So there’s that!
NEW ALCOHOL POLICY FOR LAW SCHOOL [Virginia Law Weekly]
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He’s much funnier if you are drinking while he’s talking.