“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
These two quotes from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 accurately sum up Connecticut College’s policy on underage alcohol consumption — a policy that is equally vague as it is ineffective. Our campus’ most well-known secret is that every weekend, swarms of students swap books for beers and bolt to the nearest bar, dorm room, or Ridge apartment in the search for alcohol. The epidemic is acknowledged through amnesty programs that allow students who take their drinking too far to attend a couple of educational sessions. Afterward, they are promptly released back into the world of liveliness and liver damage to repeat the same behavior for which they were reprimanded for before.
It seems irresponsible to assume that it is the students, and not the administration, that should bear the burden of the ever-watchful Big Brother: to report the hundreds of underage students who are allowed to indulge in this behavior through our complicit policy. However, the Honor Code states, “A student who is aware that a fellow-student has broken a College rule or established principle of conduct is honor bound to admonish that student to report herself. If the delinquent fails to respect this admonition, the student shall herself bring the case to the attention of the Student Council.” If this policy truly does apply to underage drinking, every single student on this campus — sober or not — is guilty.
Enter Sean Soucy: House Fellow, SGA Board member, Honor Council member, known for being friendly, a good mentor, and proud of his school. In other words, a universally adored student.
Sean was fired as a House Fellow for not reporting underage drinking at a party he did not attend. Further, he was forced to withdraw from the college because his REAL Staff job helped him afford the tuition.
One has to wonder whether the college’s policies are doing the institution any good. First, their policy on tenure track cost them the only professor of color in a department specifically named “Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies” (emphasis mine). Now, they have sacrificed their arguably most beloved student for a false sense of sobriety.
Here, we are caught in a double bind. If a student wishes to not get in trouble for reporting a classmate, they must deny to themselves that underage drinking is a prevalent issue on this campus. For the college to keep its students happy, administrators must simultaneously promote underage drinking with lenient amnesty policies while firing REAL staff members who confirm that this underage drinking exists.
The term “alcohol” appears 325 times in our student handbook, yet none of these instances have to do with a specific rule stating that a House Fellow or Floor Governor should report any instance of supposed or actual underage alcohol consumption. Instead, I found evidence that further incriminates our institution in the Sean Soucy situation.
Did you know that we have a Student Bill of Rights? Did you know that under this Bill of Rights, all students are guaranteed “The Right of Fair Practice in Disciplinary Matters,” which includes the right to “full and fair notice of the alleged violation(s)” the right to participate in the conduct process, and the right to request a student conduct review? Do you think that a discrete decision made over winter break, most likely without an Honor Council proceeding staffed by students, counts as “Fair Practice”?
Did you know that many sanctions for drinking violations are monetary? If a student permits underage alcohol consumption in a dorm room with ten or fewer people, she would only get a $25 fine for her first infraction. Essentially, anyone who can cough up the money is allowed a one-time pass to drink while underage. The problem is that a large portion of students are unequally affected by these policies based on their socioeconomic background. Furthermore, students under financial aid are at a greater risk when alcohol policies threaten their student employment. One must also realize that REAL Staff’s high-paying salary mostly attracts middle-to-lower class students, who are especially vulnerable to college’s whims.
Who are these policies truly benefiting? The answer lies at the end of a breadcrumb trail of crumpled dollar bills.
Think about Floralia. Think about Festivus. Think about the rumors you hear about sports teams taking out prospective recruits to parties to encourage them to come to Conn. Think about the college policy that “strongly discourages,” but does not outright ban, the serving of alcohol to students in the private homes of faculty and staff. Our administration would never encourage these happenings, but they do not exactly discourage them either. Parties and drinking are popular activities on this campus — eliminating them would cost tens of thousands of dollars in tuition money. The rules were never meant to apply to the apathetic, idle teens of the upper-class, who fuel the college with their biannual deposits of $35,985. Instead, when the college needs a martyr, they pick someone they could do without — someone who could easily be replaced by a full-paying student.
Sean Soucy is not just the victim of a vague and unevenly enforced policy- he is the victim of a system that favors the top-paying students of this institution.
But perhaps the institution has the right idea. Let’s all go around, reporting every single student we suspect of underage drinking and firing every REAL Staff member accused of knowing about this drinking, until every student lives under constant fear. Let friend betray friend, student betray staff, and administrator betray parent, until we all sing Orwell’s song of freedom:
“Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”
