Princeton Undergraduate Student Government

Relations between students, public safety and the Borough police are a constantly evolving dynamic that is driven in large part by issues of underage drinking. The main area of agreement between these different players is that student health and safety are of utmost importance, but there remains substantial disagreement as to how to achieve this. The result is a number of disparate attitudes and uncoordinated initiatives that can often work against one another.

The USG has identified this as one of the most important issues in student life, and we believe that as student representatives, our voice is one that should not go unnoticed on this issue. We recognize that high-risk drinking is a social norm in some circles at Princeton and on most college campuses, and we realize that effecting the necessary culture change is unrealistic in the short term. As such we have focused in the short term on making sure that high-risk drinkers make it to health services or to the hospital. We believe that students are generally responsible in helping intoxicated friends, but we want to make sure that in the borderline cases, students are not deterred from calling for help.

Our view is that the largest deterrent is uncertainty with the law. Recently the Borough has taken to riding with the ambulance on ambulance calls, and trying to ascertain who provided the alcohol. A number of students have been charged and there is a growing fear of making the ambulance call. While the USG recognizes the Borough’s obligation to uphold the law, we don’t want students to hesitate from calling the police because they’re not sure how best to talk to them or avoid a serving violation.

This has inspired our recent project, which is a wallet card that will hopefully help students to make the right decision. The card includes information about alcohol safety (i.e. when to call for help), and rights and responsibilities both with Public Safety and the Borough police. To decide what was most important and to ensure reliability of the information, we met with deans, Public Safety officials, and a lawyer in town (many thanks to Robert Wills for meeting with us). We’ve recently finished our final draft of the card, and we were originally planning on distributing it this spring. But because of recent budget cuts we can only afford one printing, so the cards will be distributed to all students in the fall. We will also hopefully be able to reinforce these cards with an online resource, particularly because the information on the card is specific to situations in which students might be encountering law enforcement.

Please e-mail Cole Morris, Mike Weinberg, Harry Schiff, Sam Dorison, or George Tsivin if you have questions, comments, or concerns.

Alcohol Card Preview