On Campus Drinking

Recently visiting two colleges, Grinnell and Knox, of course the subject of campus social life and parties was visited. Grinnell, has an open campus policy where most partying takes place on campus under a "self-governed" trust policy. At Knox, most everything happens off campus. Grinnell was the first school I had seen where the social life was pretty much centered on campus. The students I talked to said that they were very fond of how this worked. Yes of course, alcohol and drugs were still present, but almost every single one of them mentioned having a better partying experience because people weren't trying to hide anything from "the officials." They said people were more casual in their partying and binge drinking on campus was rare. These students were protected by campus police in the event of an emergency, but in their policy, there was never anyone getting in trouble for underage drinking unless they were causing a problem. It made me wonder if all college campuses should be like this. With less things happening off campus and not involving other security people (off campus, rather than just on campus cops) the partying would definitely be more casual. People may not feel as rushed to get drunk because there is a short window of time to drink on friday night. This would most likely work better for smaller colleges because there would be less people causing a disturbance, and less people to abide by such an honor code. Some people might see this as an encouragement to drink, but ALL the students I talked to said that they felt less pressured to drink in this environment because 1. they knew that the opportunity was more readily available so they could later if they wanted to and 2. as part of the honor code, people respected the wishes of people who chose not to participate in these activities.