One wonders how Assistant Dean of Students and Student Conduct Kevin Butler spent his Friday nights in college. One hopes he had friends—maybe some buddies who would play board games with him, watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, and listen to funky music. But it’s abundantly clear what Dean Butler did not spend his Friday nights doing: partying, dancing, and playing drinking games. If he had, his end-of-the-summer blanket ban on drinking games, borgs, and ice luges (ice luges???) might have looked quite a bit different.
If he had partied, maybe he would understand that there is hardly a slower way to consume alcohol than to play beer pong. His email specifies prohibiting drinking games designed to encourage “rapid and/or excessive consumption of alcohol” and then uses this as the basis to ban all “drinking games/paraphernalia…regardless of one’s age.” Beer pong, rage cage, beer die, stump—these games encourage not binge drinking, but social drinking. True binge drinking is far more likely to occur at the pregame (where spirits tend to dominate) than at a party, where the drink of choice is the weakest beer known to man. Banning drinking games specifically designed to inebriate I can maybe understand, but the policy change, as it is, is as untargeted as it is dimwitted. The Dean may find that students, knowing not to expect consistent alcohol at parties, will simply resort to heavier drinking at the pregame.
“OUCH!” (That was the Dean yelping, his own policy biting him in the ass.)
Dean Butler would be wise to consider how integral a healthy party scene is to the college experience. He might appreciate its ability to connect corners of the campus that would otherwise never meet, to release stress for students who have spent more hours in Olin than there are books, and to form memories that will warm the connection to Wesleyan for decades to come. He might understand how a good drinking game contributes to a good party; it offers relief for those tired of dancing or talking, and an extra dimension to an event that truly might otherwise only be fun if one is smashed.
Dean Butler’s more than 10-year tenure has been marked by the calculated dismantling of Wesleyan’s once-famous party scene. A school defined by its countercultural bacchanals (Eclectic Sex Party, anyone?), its vibrant fraternity life, its Grateful-Dead-inspired drug culture, has reached the point where even beer pong is a step too far. The Dean enjoys the benefit of an unfortunate quirk of a student body: a structurally poor institutional memory, limited by the four-year cycle of its members. Students today don’t question the fact that all parties need to be registered, that program houses are severely limited in the events they can throw, or that P-Safe must be aware of all on-campus kegs. Wesleyan used to allow open containers. Then they banned them everywhere except Foss Hill. Then they banned them on Foss Hill. One can only imagine where the ban will be extended next.
The extent to which Butler is out of touch with the realities of our party scene is ridiculous. Students, especially underclassmen, often have no real place to go on a Friday night, and our parties tend to be quite tame in contrast with other universities. We should be so lucky to see ice luges on campus! Wesleyan does not have a drinking problem, something Dean Butler well-nigh admits to in his email when he admits that the overwhelming majority of students avoid binge drinking when they imbibe. (According to WesWell statistics cited in the email, 71% of students avoid binge drinking.)
With the new policy, getting caught throwing two parties that are at all reasonably fun rockets any senior into the realm of disciplinary probation. The number of parties thrown is going to fall, and only increasingly so as seniors have exhausted the points they’re able to risk (don’t get tricked by the present glow of the pre-points era!). The drinking-game-less parties that remain will be as un-fun as they are overcrowded—at least the food truck owners will finally get a full night’s sleep!
Butler is able to tighten his grip on a student body as unsuspecting as a frog in a pot of boiling water. And that water can get much, much hotter. Many of Wesleyan’s peer institutions have instituted unbelievably draconian rules concerning parties to a nasty effect. Any student who has spent a weekend night at Tufts, where party-throwers are required to submit an exact guest list to university officials 48 hours in advance, knows this intimately. Just the same is true at Amherst, Colby, Bowdoin…a frightening glimpse into a potential future for Wes. Of course, to blame Butler is not totally fair; he is simply continuing the work begun by his predecessor, Crusader-Against-Fun and registered sex offender Scott Backer (yes, you did read that right).
None of this touches on the insult of a ban that specifically targets students over the age of 21. What an of-age adult chooses to do in their own home on their own time should not be the concern of the administration. Wesleyan loves to tout its model of “progressive independence” and then chooses to treat its eldest students like bright-eyed high schoolers. Baldwin v. Zoradi, a California court case from the wise era of the 80s, offers Dean Butler some wisdom:
“The transfer of prerogatives and rights from college administrators to the students is salubrious when seen in the context of a proper goal of postsecondary education—the maturation of the students.”
Universities are educational, not custodial, institutions, and part of that education lies in allowing adults to learn the lessons adults need to learn. This helicopter-administrating is both offensive and unwise, buying into a noxious trend in elite higher education of genuflecting to demanding parents by coddling precious-snowflake undergrads. By instituting policies like these, Wesleyan simply contributes to the custodial mania, furthering a self-perpetuating cycle of self-sabotage in the endless pursuit of avoiding frivolous lawsuits and placating overbearing Westchester mama-bears. Will bans on premarital intercourse, frolicking, and sleeping in on Saturday be next?
The student body needs to recognize the institutional crusade against undergraduate independence for what it is, and our response begins by rejecting this blitheringly stupid ban. It is not crazy to regulate excessive drinking on campus, but such regulation must respond to the actuality of our party culture and reasonably balance safety with independence. Perhaps if Butler had engaged with the student body in crafting the policy, it would have made some semblance of sense, but instead he chose to sneakily impose it in the waning days of summer, blatantly disregarding the recommendation of the WSA and avoiding consultation with anybody who knows how to hang. So please, Dean Butler: this Friday night, throw on some Versace Eros and crack open a Natty Light. You might just learn something about Wesleyan and, hey, have some fun too!
Isaac Ostrow is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at iostrow@wesleyan.edu.
Adam Wilan is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at awilan@wesleyan.edu.
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