In an effort to combat drinking on campus, Stanford University has upped the ante in terms of curbing alcohol abuse, allowing the school to be exempt from Santa Clara County’s new ordinance on underage drinking.
The new ordinance, which took effect in 2009, allows police to issue $1,000 citations to anyone hosting a party where there is underage drinking, reports SFGate.com. Because the university is considered the landlord to students who reside in the dormitories, under the ordinance, it could be held liable in the event of an on-campus party involving underage drinking.
However, because Stanford already had strong policies to combat campus drinking, such as requiring incoming freshman to take a three-hour online course on alcohol abuse, university officials believed that the school should be exempt from the county’s regulations.
Stanford asked the Board of Supervisors to monitor the university’s policies for a year when the ordinance was introduced in order that the campus might receive a permanent exemption. With authorities agreeing to that, Stanford toughened its alcohol policies.
New policies include pushing move-in day for resident students closer to the first day of school to reduce the number of parties before classes begin; increasing campus police presence on nights where parties are scheduled; and temporarily banning on-campus fraternities from having alcohol at parties due to incidents involving underage drinking in 2009.
On Jan. 26, the Santa Clara County supervisors unanimously approved an updated version of the ordinance that “explicitly exempts officers and agents of institutions of higher learning.”
In the 2008-09 school year at Stanford, 44 underage students were taken to the hospital due to alcohol abuse, 73 were arrested for possession of alcohol by a minor, 13 for being drunk in public and five for being a minor driving under the influence.
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