On Tuesday night, the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) hosted a forum to discuss safety concerns surrounding the annual Tour de Franzia student scavenger hunt. Students and administrators engaged in a dialogue on how to reduce high-risk student drinking, vandalism, and property damage.

WSA President Zachary Malter ’13 opened the event by stating that he believed that problems resulted from a disconnect between students and the administration, and that he hoped the discussion would produce mutual understanding and concrete solutions to minimize health risks and property damage.

According to Director of Public Safety (PSafe) Dave Meyer, during last year’s Tour de Franzia in early May, the ten Public Safety officers in the field were largely unable to control the large number of intoxicated students, which he described as having an “intoxicated crowd mentality.” Students participated in vandalism and property damage and behaved aggressively toward PSafe officers, he said.

According to Vice President of Student Affairs Mike Whaley, the past two years’ events have seen a large number of students being sent to Middlesex Hospital due to extreme intoxication. Two years ago, he said, the emergency room at Middlesex Hospital reached capacity on the night of Tour de Franzia, which he said speaks to the unhealthy and high-risk nature of student binge drinking during the event.

“We have a responsibility to try to mitigate situations that are dangerous,” Whaley said. “But this is a very tricky situation because a lot of students are interested in participating.”

Several students at the forum took issue with the harsh tone they believed PSafe officers and the administration adopted during the event, claiming it may lead participating students to cause greater harm to themselves and University property while trying to avoid punishment. Concerns were also raised that the administration’s tone caused the planning of the event to go underground, making it even more difficult to restructure in the future to ensure safety.

President Michael Roth, who was not present at the forum, said that the University’s policy is to keep students as safe as possible by discouraging any event that would include binge-drinking. He added that the difficulty of doing so is due to the anonymity of the event’s planners.

“Should we find out who those people are, they will be disciplined, up to and including suspension from the University,” he said.

Administrators at the forum, such as Whaley, Meyer, Dean of Students Rick Culliton, and Director of WesWell Tanya Purdy, said that student safety was their greatest concern. They emphasized that student intoxication led to vandalism and property damage, and that lessening the degree of students’ alcohol consumption should be prioritized. Administrators and students also spent time discussing the University’s open-container policy more generally.

Though no concrete solutions were agreed upon, students and WSA members present at the event proposed many potential changes to make the event safer and less destructive. The changes included re-examining sanctions for students who vandalize property, having sober student leaders in the field on the night of the event, a student-led campaign to change the rules and regulations of the event, and efforts to avoid underground planning in order to make the event more transparent.

Reiss Clauson-Wolf ’13 said that he came to the forum because he thinks Tour de Franzia is a facet of campus life that affects all members of the community.

“I think it was positive that there was the direct dialogue with administrators, which I think is something that is, if not rare, then not as readily available as it should be,” he said.

Meyer emphasized that the forum provided an opportunity for students and administrators to see each other’s points, but said that further dialogue is necessary.

“It’s important for both sides to see the issues and that the enforcement that our office is doing isn’t just random—there are really student safety concerns here,” he said. “I don’t think we’re seeing eye-to-eye but I think we’re seeing each other’s points at this point.”

Whaley said that he thought that students understood the issues that administrators raised and agreed with the need to address them, but that a greater consensus has yet to be reached.

“What I heard a lot of was that the University should just redact our policies and look the other way and I think I described to folks why that really wasn’t possible,” he said. “People were saying the damage and vandalism were completely out of hand and there was no excuse for that, but I think that the issue is that the damage and vandalism comes about because people are just so intoxicated.”

Whaley added that he hoped that student leaders would be an integral part of any further discussion and the implementation of any solutions agreed upon.

“[Not everyone] may agree with or endorse some of the strategies that we come up with, but having the discussion and hearing their views on it will probably offer the best chance of coming up with the best responses to it,” he said.

Malter said that the holistic nature of the dialogue between students and administrators was unprecedented, and that he hoped to further the discussion in the future.

“Historically I don’t think there has been any conversation of that sort with all of the different players there, and I think that that same dialogue will hopefully translate into an event with fewer high-risk behaviors,” he said. “I think this issue is frustrating because there are no obvious solutions, but I think it will require all sides to recalibrate and reconsider what they’re doing.”