IU should temper response to minor violations

Curbing drug and alcohol use on campus has been a major priority for college and university administrators for decades.

Because IU is a large, state school with a reputation for partying, administrators must be especially attentive to substance abuse.

It is a tricky issue to address. Drinking has been part of college culture since college existed in its modern form.

That is unlikely to change completely.

For many students, a miniscule age difference separates a good time with friends from a citation.

Marijuana use and underage drinking are illegal and against University policy.

Such offenses are widespread and generally not as harmful as other crimes.

IU must be careful not to overreact to them. It sometimes does.

For example, residence hall regulations ban empty alcohol containers in dorms, including “displays that are meant to be decorative.”

The “trophy bottle” rule prohibits what is literally a molded piece of glass with a label right alongside firearms, lab specimens and Bunsen burners.

Compared to handguns, open flames and engineered diseases, I do not see how empty bottles plausibly pose any of the “health, safety and insurance liability” risks that Residential Program and Services uses to justify its list of prohibited items.

Arizona State University, which has a similar policy, provides more clarity.

Its empty bottle ban serves to prevent “negative messages sent to minors.”

But does stopping “negative messages” justify penalizing students for having functionally harmless vessels devoid of their forbidden contents in their private rooms?

The residence hall regulations also state that IU deems everyone in a room where a violation is occurring “complicit” in that violation.

The policy amounts to guilt by association.

It compels resident assistants who bust a dorm party to charge clearly sober students similarly to rule-breakers.

Many students who are found responsible for minor drug and alcohol violations in the campus judicial system face a postgraduate disciplinary record.

Drug and alcohol offenders are overwhelmingly sanctioned with Disciplinary Probation.

Under Disciplinary Probation, students may be called on to complete a program or provide a service and may also face greater sanctions should they commit additional violations during the period of probation.

But Disciplinary Probation generates a disciplinary record that IU keeps for five years after a student graduates.

Conversely, students who receive a Reprimand and Warning have their files destroyed when they graduate.

Disciplinary Probation can be prescribed for a student caught with a pipe, cited after being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning or cited at a tailgate for underage drinking just as easily as it can be applied to drunk drivers and repeat offenders.

Student judicial boards are trained to issue Disciplinary Probation routinely for substance violations.

The RPS judicial board manual states that “as a general guideline, first time marijuana/other drug offenses are given a sanction of disciplinary probation.

This is also the general guideline for second offenses of the same nature.”

Violations of University policy should be punished.

That being said minor, victimless, first-time offenses should not generate a record that could jeopardize employment or graduate school.

And student judicial boards should take account of the fact that, per their training manual, they can consult with the assistant director for student

conduct if they do not want to use a sanction of Disciplinary Probation for such a violation.

It is, of course, in administrators’ interest to reduce the incidence and harm of drinking on campus.

But the way in which IU handles substance violations should reflect social realities, fair notions of justice and the actual harm caused by the violation.

­— danoconn@indiana.edu