From Dean W’s Digs: On the Alcohol Pledge
Hustler Editor-in-Chief Michael Warren’s Wednesday editorial “alcohol scare tactics ignore personal choice” criticized my colleague Tony Brown’s stance on alcohol consumption in Hank Ingram House. Warren also said things about my neighborhood, where I now live with my family, new friends like the Browns, and 1570 of you. Tony Brown half-jokingly kids me that I’m “The Man,” and I guess I am. I still think of myself as a history professor, though. In responding to Warren’s editorial, I guess I ended up producing an abstract of the way in which I read essays—my own and those of my students. I thought the editorial was a well-written, but very poorly argued essay, long on rhetoric, weakly supported with evidence, and uncertain of its purpose. My daughters also told me last night that nobody will talk to you because they know you’ll never stop talking. Read on at your own risk.
Warren thinks that CommonVU was “the most boring introduction to college in the country.” I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard that one before, but the editor’s setting up his argument, and editorializing. More than one first-year said the week was getting long, that she was anxious for classes to start, felt the need to get a little more structure. They talked about liking the time to settle in, start making the transition, learn their way around campus, meet their roommate, hall mates, members of their House, new friends, the faculty, upperclassmen, and their neighborhood.
Of course, nobody walked up to the dean and said they were anxious to party, although we scheduled in plenty of time for that—General Jackson, Global Stretch, movie on the lawn, Casino Night, Gold Rush, VJ Ron, House activities. There also was, rumor in the neighborhood had it, plenty of off-campus action—and judging from the SUV and taxi traffic going by my house each night last week, many of you were stepping outside the Vanderbubble. Nashville’s a cool city, from its downtown to its neighborhoods.
“Clearly, the operative issue was alcohol,” Warren explains, “…the concern is freshmen will be sucked into a life of booze and debauchery before they’ve even started classes.” That concern’s “legitimate,” he writes. I agree. Who wouldn’t? Studies are beginning to suggest a linkage between binge drinking (5 oz. or more per day) by males in their 20s and increased incidence of cardio-vascular disease in their 40s. Still, that’s not Warren’s point. He wants to imply, without evidence, the by now tired argument that somehow everything going on in The Commons revolves in opposition to fraternities and sororities. “What sort of message,” he asks, “does this policy send to our new students about Greek Life, drinking, and personal responsibility?”
I wasn’t aware that there was any message here about Greek Life. Actually, CommonVU was not planned (and I was running the meetings) with an eye to what he proclaims, without any evidence, to have been policy. I wonder why Warren even brings it up. Surely he doesn’t accuse Vanderbilt Greeks of encouraging a life of booze and debauchery before they’ve even started classes? The issue here, as students (many of them my friends) across Greek Row will be the first to acknowledge, is drinking and personal responsibility.
Now we come to the core of the Hustler editorial. Warren writes, “Assistant Professor of Sociology Tony Brown, the faculty head of Hank Ingram House, took it upon himself to draft an alcohol abstinence pledge,” which he asked the residents of Hank Ingram to sign. (By the way, Brown is Associate Professor, newly promoted last spring by the Board of Trust to tenure because Vanderbilt values his path-breaking research on race and public health and his credentials as a teacher and adviser). Actually, and Warren again has his facts wrong, the abstinence pledge was part of a Thursday afternoon of discussions and activities built around the VU Community Creed in Hank Ingram House. Brown went beyond, really beneath, the Community Creed and sought to generate a real discussion about community values in his House, where he also lives. One-third of HI’s 300-odd students signed, and two-thirds did not. And, did he ever generate discussion.
Warren’s Hustler editorial wants to make Professor Brown’s fictitious “passive-aggressive” letter from John B. Firstyear, which he posted on CommonPlace, the center of the argument. Warren does not object directly to the voluntary pledge, but targets instead the admittedly questionable letter, which he claims demeaned students by detailing the outlines of an alcohol culture—drinking in response to social pressure, using alcohol as self-medication in awkward social situations, getting buzzed. Tony Brown, Warren insisted, was implying that everybody who didn’t sign the pledge fell into that category.
I will admit that I would not have written the letter. I’ve lived in the Soviet Union and study autocracy and have developed over my lifetime a healthy libertarian suspicion of all authority—which makes my current position a little tricky, personally, but that’s another essay. I don’t disagree with the pledge, which has raised a basic fact of Vanderbilt community true life and created a discussion around it. I do disagree with the letter as written, but I disagree with my colleagues repeatedly. That’s the beauty of a university. Everybody has the right to disagree and have their arguments subjected to reasoned criticism.
Indeed, two-thirds of the students in HI disagreed—although from what I hear as many did so out of similar libertarian reactions to authority as from a desire to protect their right to drink. Some (many?) undoubtedly want to drink. If you are apprehended doing so and you are under 21 or possess false identification, you will be subject to Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Criminal Code and/or University student conduct proceedings. It is not a pleasant phone call home.
What Warren misses in all of this is that many of you—many of you—have begun to discuss what amounts to two cultures—one with alcohol at its core, another without. It’s remarkable how often I’ve heard students tell me that they were relieved to hear from Professor Brown that “Make smart choices” meant something more than “Don’t get caught.” I thought this was supposed to be the idea of our Commons? Disagree, challenge, argue, think.
Yet, it is also the case that Warren’s view of college life is, well, old-fashioned. His world is two shades of monochrome. I prefer technicolor. Life in The Commons, and really at Vanderbilt, is much more complex than some drink, some don’t, some are greek, some aren’t. One-third of Ingram residents signed the pledge, and surely not all for one reason. What’s up with that? Some of the two-thirds didn’t sign because they didn’t like Big Brother, but thought Brown bold and brave for raising the discussion of a non-alcohol culture in the first place. What’s up with that? Some went to off-campus parties last week—and came home saying this is stupid. What’s up with that? Others par-tayed, maybe had fun, and will have to learn about balance as the academic semester begins. What’s up with that? And, if past predicts future (I’m an historian, it does), some of you will end up in VUMC Emergency with alcohol poisoning. What’s up with that?
Personal responsibility. The Commons has been arguing about this for a week now. Warren’s editorial defends instead personal choice—and implies a preference for not arguing about anything. Let it be. Leave it to me. Let me do what I want. Why is he not recognizing “college reality?” It’s personal.
Is it? In today’s world, where we are networked in every direction, how can responsibility, to self and others, just be personal? That’s just old-fashioned. To quote a good friend of mine, a graduate of the Class of 2008, it’s also not commonish.