Don’t plan on grabbing a beer after visiting the George W. Bush Library at SMU. The campus has gone dry, according to this AP article.
The recommendations, accepted by University President R. Gerald Turner, were intended to give the school more control over social events and cut down on drunken driving; the campus has had three students deaths recently due to drugs or alcohol.
too bad
It won’t help. People who get drunk or high enough to get hurt are doing it under the university’s radar. At a college, the bigger the worse it is, students will die due to drugs and booze. You can do your best but it won’t stop.
All you can do is slow it down. A dry campus won’t slow it down. Especially in Dallas. Geez.
counter intuitive, but…
It may be a bit counter-intuitive, but having a campus bar might CUT DOWN on drunken driving incidents, at least for on-campus residential students. Rice University in Houston, Texas has *TWO* on-campus drinking establishments precisely for this reason–one for current undergrads, and one for grad students & alumni and other Adult members of the “Rice Community” (faculty, other professionals at neighboring institutions, etc). They feel like they can keep a closer watch on the students and keep them out of trouble if they stay on campus to do their drinking rather than go off campus somewhere by car. Students that live on campus might drink to impairment levels as regards driving, but can still safely walk back to their dorms to sleep it off after last call.
But if you force students to go off campus to drink/socialize, the best you can hope for is that they will pick a designated driver or take a cab to/from their favorite off campus watering hole, unless there happen to be privately owned drinking establishments within easy walking distance of the campus, like at Texas A&M Univ (Northgate area) or the University of North Texas (Fry Street District).
Learning how to drink responsibly, or else coming to terms with their own nascent alcoholism as a result of negative consequences and learning to abstain voluntarily through AA, or Rehab, or Rational Recovery, or what have you, is all part of the college learning/socialization process, what some call “The other education”.
If we had more walkable, humane communities in general it would help reduce the deadly mix of alcohol and automobiles.
Sloppy, stinking drunk is
Sloppy, stinking drunk is about the only way you’d ever get me inside the George W. Bush Library. Guess I’ll have to cross it off my list of potential vacation destinations. Shucks.