Laura is a neuroscience major, pre-med and the starting goalie on the women’s field hockey team. She loves Ke$ha, a fact she advertises only when she believes her dorm bathroom is vacant and hers is the only shower running.
Laura’s parents arrive on Friday of Parents’ Weekend and take her out for dinner at Olio, a local restaurant Laura heard was good but had not yet experienced for herself. At the end of the meal, Laura’s father raises a glass and toasts her senior fall and her coming twenty-second birthday as the family shares a beer. Full of prosciutto-stuffed chicken breast and eager to get back to campus to see her friends and begin the night, Laura offers to drive her family at least as far as campus, knowing that they had spent most of the day driving down from Maine to see her.
She and her older brother Jake bicker over control of the radio, jumping from her favorite 107.7 to the 100.9 classic rock he had discovered on the way into New London. Laura rolls up the hill past the Gatehouse and onto campus, and accidentally performs a “rolling stop” at the intersection by the new Science Center. Flashing blue lights behind her indicate that she is being pulled over by Campus Safety for running the stop sign.
Jake mutes the radio, grinning ear to ear. As Laura rolls down the window to apologize to the concerned officer, her mother, a Manhattan native, chides her from the back seat for never really having learned to drive in order to pass Maine’s driving test. The Campus Safety officer cites Laura for a moving violation on campus, and, smelling alcohol on her breath, asks if she has been drinking. Not wanting to lie to the officer, she tells him that yes, she had a beer with dinner, quickly rationalizing that she would have told a police officer the same thing. The Campus Safety officer, abiding by policy, informs her that in addition to her moving violation, she is guilty of “one of the most serious community violations” (Honor Code Section IIIA) at Conn and that she should expect an Honor Council hearing in the near future.
The silence in the car is deafening. Laura’s parents are aghast, Jake’s smile has vanished, and what was once an enjoyable night has turned terribly sour. Laura knows of a student who had been caught driving drunk on campus and who had rightfully earned a disciplinary probation sentence that kept him from studying abroad the following semester. Laura’s parents are horrified, yet feel somehow responsible for this mess. Two and a half weeks later, Laura is summoned to the Honor Council, who, adhering to the precedent they created in previous cases, sanction her with disciplinary probation and a likely suspension from her team’s next game.
What’s wrong with this picture? That is a question I’m not sure I can answer, but there’s nothing that we as students, or anyone else, can do about it. I want to emphasize that I am in no way condoning drinking and driving, nor am I indicating that athletes or people from Maine or neuroscience majors are more likely to partake in the activity. I am instead pointing out, through this hypothetical situation, an issue that has been brought to my attention here on campus. There are a few important factors that keep Connecticut College’s policy on this matter at a zero-tolerance level. For starters, training Campus Safety officers in field sobriety testing and giving them all breathalyzers would be exorbitantly expensive, and unnecessary. Next, it is (thankfully) difficult for the Honor Council to trust entirely in the testimony of a student, or of a Campus Safety officer, for that matter. Each Honor Council case is handled based on individual circumstances, and I firmly believe that this is the way it should be for justice to be served. Finally, it would reflect extremely poorly on the College and on individual students if Campus Safety were required to involve New London Police every time a drinking and driving case arose. Thus, I present instead of an opinion, a call for discourse: Was Laura’s family wrong to let her drive back to campus? Should drinking and driving be zero-tolerance on a nationwide basis? Is Conn wrong to enforce a policy stricter than that of the government? If so, how could the policy be improved? •
I liken this article to one recently written about an unwanted visitor to a Cro Dance.
A lot of people would argue that Conn is a “bubble”. We exist very separately from the greater New London, with the exception of Target runs, dinners in Mystic/from Domino’s, and the bars. When we go to these places, we travel in groups of other Conn students. We separate ourselves from New London as much as possible.
Now, that’s not a bad thing. We do have a great campus, great academics, and many students find close friends. What else could you need?
But just how perfect do we want Conn to be? In that other article, the question of how separated from New London do we want to be — to remain an open campus, or close ourselves off? Here, we ask what laws do we want — the same ones that New London has, or pick-and-choosey laws (i.e. underage drinking can slide, but one drink while driving over 21 is a ticket?)
Conn relies on New London due to its territory. The students fuel the economy during the school year (it’s true — bars and other Bank Street retailers see drastic decreases in traffic during the summer), yet we keep to ourselves otherwise. Should we keep New London and Conn separate, or do we want to see students using New London as an part of our campus? I, personally, would love to see a group of lax bros strolling down Bank Street on a casual Thursday afternoon, but I worry that’s just a pipe dream. Then I wonder why is this a pipe dream? Is it a lack of transportation to/from Campus, or is it something else? Urban Dictionary warns that “New Lo meth heads will eat your face,” but having worked in New London I find quite the opposite. Maybe it’s our heads that are messed up.