President Bottom's Address

 

BUILDING A RESPONSIBLE COMMUNITY

by
Robert G. Bottoms
President
DePauw University
March 4, 2003

Not since 1987 have I, as President, felt the need to speak to the entire campus community. I want to thank you for coming. Today I want to talk about the kind of community we want DePauw to be, what kind of students we want to attract, and what we can do to enable the students we do attract to reach their full potential. I want to talk about responsibility and the role your being responsible plays in combating one of the primary problems on most college campuses today--alcohol abuse commonly referred to as “at-risk” behavior.

My addressing this topic today may be long overdue. I say this because when Dr. Patricia Owen of the Hazelden Foundation was in Greencastle last spring interviewing DePauw students about alcohol use on campus, she met some students who felt neither the president, in particular, nor the administration, in general, cared about campus alcohol issues. Let me assure you this perception is not correct. I care and care deeply. In fact, the role alcohol has come to play in our community is one of my primary concerns.

Let me first address the current situation on campuses across the country. The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported the following facts in April 2002.

• Four persons per day die each year from alcohol-related injuries on campus;
  

• Literally thousands of students are injured on the nation’s campuses as a result of alcohol consumption; and
  

• Seventy thousand students are estimated to be victims of date rape.
  

Because these are national statistics, many of you would argue they have no relevance to DePauw. But deep in our hearts we know otherwise. We have problems at DePauw also. Over the last 18 months, we have received reports from the Trustee Committee for Greek Community Excellence, Pat Owen of the Hazelden Foundation and the report of our Greek consultants Holly McKiernan and Peter Lake. These reports make the case that nationally alcohol abuse is prominently linked to two campus groups: Greek organizations and athletics, both of which play an important and visible role in our community.

I want to comment on these concerns today, realizing that anytime a college president mentions the Greek system he or she is automatically suspect by the students. Never mind that as an undergraduate, I was affiliated with a Greek letter organization. So was my wife and both of our children. I know and can appreciate the Greek system both as a participant and as an observer.

On a national basis, many colleges and universities have well-established Greek traditions, but there are few campuses in the country more Greek than DePauw. Two national sororities were founded on our campus. Numerous times I have heard the stories from alumni who remain connected to the University because of their Greek affiliations. These loyal alumni quickly state that they have viewed their fraternity and sorority experiences as a leadership laboratory. For many, this has been the case and this is a positive.

However, there can be another side to Greek life as well. We know alcohol abuse does not just occur in residence halls. Sometimes, in fact, alcohol abuse is centered in the Greek houses. We all know this to be the case, for our surveys of you--our student body--have told us so.

Over the past several years, the administration has made numerous attempts at public programming to address the alcohol abuse issue. Perhaps one of the best attended was in 1997, when we had students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Louisiana State University--where alcohol abuse had cost the lives of two undergraduate students--to speak to us. During that occasion, I mentioned how difficult it would be as President of the University to make a call to parents to inform them their son or daughter had died in some alcohol-related incident. Some faculty and staff may remember that event. While large convocations such as the one I have described are emotional, their impact is short lived. What we need today is not an emotional reaction to alcohol abuse, but a long-term targeted effort to deal with our problems. We know that we need this effort because you, the students, have told us.

What do I mean when I say you have told us? In both 2000 and 2002, we conducted surveys among you, our student body. We received over 500 responses. Forty-seven percent of the students who responded in 2000 reported they had participated in binge drinking within the past two weeks. This figure increased to 49 percent in 2002. Last year, 33 percent of you stated you had missed a class as a result of alcohol abuse.

In the spring of 2002, 22 students faced judicial action where the cause was alcohol related. This number had risen to 53 in the fall of 2002. I am told by the Dean of Students that 75 percent of the judicial cases at DePauw involve alcohol. In the spring of 2002, two students and one guest in our community were admitted to local emergency facilities as a result of alcohol abuse. Last fall, four students and two guests were admitted.

In discussing DePauw student behavior with our consultants, a familiar refrain voiced by you was, “At DePauw, we work hard and then we play hard.” This has become part of the DePauw mystique. Few of you may envision any other type of environment and many of you may want no other type of environment. Too often social life at DePauw is primarily oriented around alcohol and social events where alcohol is the focus. This occurs not just with men in the fraternities. The report from the University’s Task Force on the Status of Women notes that far more women at DePauw consider themselves drinkers than not. This behavior was learned as early as the first visit to the campus when you heard the word from tour guides and other students that DePauw is a party school. The refrain has often been, “There is nothing to do here but drink.” One student said, “I did not drink in high school, but now I do. Everyone does.” In the last Greek Life Survey, 83 percent of the women who responded felt that alcohol abuse was an issue in the Greek system. This figure was up from 57 percent in 1997. Forty-four percent of the Greek students responding to the survey felt the Greek system supports alcohol abuse and 38 percent felt acquaintance rape is an issue on our campus.

I am particularly concerned about acquaintance rape. When a young woman is victimized, the occasion often is associated with significant feelings of guilt. Says she, “I shouldn’t have been drinking . . . I must have been sending signals I should not have sent.” She is then told, “Don’t file a complaint. You will get the whole house in trouble. Our sorority’s reputation will go down the drain if you press charges.” With this kind of peer pressure, many of us are convinced that numerous sexual batteries go unreported. Consider the guilt, the shame and the peer pressure. Under such pressure, women are denied their judicial rights and this speaks volumes for the need to improve our environment. Why women are not more enraged is difficult to gauge. Perhaps it is simply easier to say nothing and move on.

Many among the Board of Trustees, the administration, the faculty and the student body feel that we need to change the ethos of DePauw. Hard drinking is simply not acceptable in a responsible community. If the current practices of alcohol abuse in our community are not changed, it is inevitable that someone will be seriously hurt or even die.

My goal in this address is not, as some of you suspect, to state that as a result of alcohol abuse we will dismantle the Greek system at DePauw. We full well know that what goes on in the Greek houses also goes on in the residence halls. Neither is my purpose to ban alcohol and reintroduce prohibition on campus. My goal for our community is to target high risk behavior and do all that is humanly possible to reduce that risk. We need campus-wide conversations and reflections on what it means to be a responsible member of this community.

When I speak about alcohol abuse, you need to know that I did not sit in my office and think up ways to make your lives as students miserable. My concern is part of a national collegiate movement. I serve with a core group of presidents who are working with public universities and independent colleges to create a national program where institutions communicate shared expectations of Greek units. The national movement wants to affirm academics, to state that the college undergraduate academic experience is a five-day-a-week affair. Parties on Thursday which impact classes on Friday are not to be condoned. In the academic arena, we also recognize the need for more faculty to be involved with the professed high academic goals of the Greek units.

I want to share with you a brief piece P.F. Kluge of Kenyon College has written about Kenyon. He speaks about both Kenyon College and “Camp Kenyon.” Does this sound familiar? We have heard the terms DePauw University and “Camp DePauw.” To paraphrase Professor Kluge and to change the emphasis from Kenyon to DePauw, we might say, as does he, “ . . . DePauw University is about challenging and testing students. Camp DePauw is about serving clients. DePauw University keeps students busy. Camp DePauw does all it can to make them happy. DePauw University has rules to which it makes rare exceptions, Camp DePauw has excuses.”

We cannot forget that what goes on in our social life inevitably affects our academic life. Alcohol abuse does affect performance and this abuse takes away from what has made DePauw the great institution it is . . . a true and vital engagement between the professor and the student.

The fact that so many college presidents want to take a more active role in addressing the issue of alcohol abuse on campus is a recent trend. Perhaps only a few of you are aware of what college was like just a few decades ago. Prior to the late sixties, administrations worked under the doctrine of in loco parentis. This means that the college acted as parents, i.e., if you please, a babysitter to students. We helped make decisions for you, just as a parent does in raising a child. In the aftermath of the sixties, colleges began to play a new role, that of bystander. The freedom that you, as students, have was celebrated. You were considered adults in every way. You were free to make your own decisions. Faculty and administrations claimed we were educators and we had no business interfering with the private social choices you as adults made. But this was unrealistic. We know from data you have shared with us that alcohol does affect academic performance. We cannot be simply educators and pretend your social lives do not impact your in-class performance. Thirty-three percent of you in the survey mentioned that alcohol had caused you to miss class assignments and often class itself.

In a national context, colleges are not returning to in loco parentis; neither do we seek to be bystanders. Perhaps the best model for the contemporary university, as Peter Lake, a law professor specializing in higher education law at Stetson University, has stated, is to be one of facilitator--a balance between parent and bystander. The facilitator university is one where the university and students share responsibility for student safety. We will not choose for you; you will continue to make your own choices. But it is incumbent upon us to give you information, to give you training, to give you instructions, to point out options you may have and even, at times, to withdraw options. We need to work with you to reduce peer influence to abuse alcohol. It is critical that you, as students, join with us to help change the ethos of the campus.

Given the situation both nationally and locally that I have described, DePauw commissioned Holly McKiernan, the Executive Director and general counsel of Alpha Chi Omega, and Peter Lake to examine our community environment and make a report to us on what they recommended to reduce alcohol abuse. Their report will be posted on our web site tomorrow. I invite you to read it for yourselves. Undoubtedly, you will not agree with all of it. In fact, I may not agree with all of it, but I would like to cite some of the observations that are absolutely true.

First, if we are to reduce alcohol abuse at DePauw, we must start with our admissions process. Apparently, there are two processes of admissions that take place concurrently. One process is run by our Admission staff. It is formal, professional and very effective. The second process is less formal. It consists of what you, our current students, tell the prospective students, whether it be on campus tours or in the discussions held privately in our living units. These conversations between you and prospective students have often promoted the image of DePauw as a drinking and a party school. In fact, we know that many high school students have participated in drinking in our residence halls and our Greek houses. These students, in turn, come to DePauw holding the expectation that we will condone a hard partying environment and many choose DePauw for that reason (even though some choose not to come for that same reason). I would refer to this as adverse selection.

The second finding of the McKiernan-Lake report is that even our first-year programming is intricately connected to the Greek system. Many of you as first-year students apparently find life boring during the fall term. Students seek to find ways into the Greek system and alcohol use is held out by some living units as a recruiting tool.

To combat this reality, the University has tried to host more non-alcoholic events. These may or may not work. They may work if students do not drink, come and have fun. They certainly do not work when first-year students drink in small groups in residence halls--frontloading, if you please--prior to alcohol-free events.

Many of you have gone through the rush experience this spring. If so, you might pause to reflect on the question, “Just exactly what is a Greek house?” It is many things. It is a place to live, i.e., an apartment complex; it is in some ways a library, i.e, a place to study; and thirdly, it is a major party outlet. Both Peter Lake and Holly McKiernan point out that few institutions in this society can carry the burden of these three responsibilities. Perhaps the image of a casino or a river boat is the most realistic one compared to what we expect of some of our Greek living units. When Pat Owen was preparing the Hazelden report, she was told what we all know--that while there are many rules and risk management plans, there are ways to get around the rules. The Greek presidents who spoke to Dr. Owen stated their concern that alcohol was free flowing in their house. One president said “Students don’t care if the house gets fined, it is nothing to do with them, it doesn’t affect them.” Clearly we have problems.

Some alumni, both young and old, also contribute to our problem. They remember, at least in the last 30 years, that alcohol was very prevalent on campus and they feel like hypocrites to tell you not to drink. In fact, many of our alumni drank heavily in college and they see nothing wrong with you doing the same. However, we must move to curb the abuses of the system.

Our consultants have not painted an entirely bleak picture, however. Pat Owen, Holly McKiernan, and Peter Lake have all stated that the student leadership they have met shows great potential. In fact, many of the campus leaders in this audience are concerned about the same issues I am describing. It has proven to be a difficult challenge to have this concern filter down to all of the community.

Given our consultant reports which I invite you to read and the situations which I have described both nationally and locally, what might we do? I propose that we change the way we conduct our admission processes. We need to be clear on what we expect of tour guides and campus hosts and we need to publicize and face squarely the problems of high risk behavior students will face on campus.

We also need to change the way our disciplinary process addresses underage drinking in the first-year class. In the past, we have focused on policing the violators themselves. Perhaps we should turn more attention to the facilitators--what Peter Lake calls “beer bullies.” These are people who exhibit high risk behavior themselves, i.e., they drink a lot and they facilitate the high risk drinking of others. One student reported to Pat Owen that a friend went to a liquor store and bought 18 cases of beer on a Thursday evening. One strategy we might adopt in changing the ethos is to focus on those who facilitate alcohol abuse on our campus. We need to target high risk behavior. We all know the evidences of high risk behavior. You can walk through some houses, see the disorder and maintenance issues and realize that alcohol plays a major role. On Sunday mornings, you can drive through campus and observe garbage and trash in the yards of some of our houses. These are indicators of abuse. Finally, as many of you have told our consultants, you are concerned about sexual assault and we are all concerned that the low reporting rates indicate a real problem.

What then shall we do? I propose to establish a campus alcohol coalition called The Coalition for a Responsible Community. Its membership will consist of the following: I will chair the commission and be supported by two alumni, one of whom shall be a Board of Trustees member. There will be two representatives from house corporations, one sorority and one fraternity; four faculty members; four administrative staff; and eight students. In the future, this Coalition for a Responsible Community shall have the oversight for the vigilance we must direct toward alcohol abuse. In addition to this overall concern, the group should call the following three task forces into being. The task forces will, in turn, report to the Coalition for a Responsible Community.

The first task force will be comprised primarily of students working with several faculty and administrators to see how viable it is for DePauw to develop a student covenant. Many institutions across the nation are turning to this strategy. The idea is to have you, as students, and we, as faculty and administrators, identify certain core values of the institution that we hold to in order to bind this community together as a responsible one. We need to think about what expectations we have of each new student who enters our community, the role of academic integrity, and how we define values like honesty, civility, caring, service and responsibility. The idea is to develop a short, concise statement of what we expect of all members who enter into this community. This covenant will then be agreed to by parents and prospective students when they send their deposits to enter DePauw. In other words, we state clearly what we expect of our students, they sign off on these expectations when they enter into the community and if these standards are violated, they may be asked to leave.

I will ask the second task force to formalize in writing the relationship between the University and the Greek community. We need a more clear understanding between the University and our Greek organizations. What should we expect of each other? What is the University expected to do and what standards must the Greeks uphold if they are to remain an organization on our campus? There are many ideas that have been discussed, but absolutely no, and let me repeat, no decisions have been made. Some trustees and alumni and house corporation members have suggested adult supervision in all the living units. Some have suggested a stronger role for faculty members; others that parties not be allowed during the week. What is at work here is that we need to look at all the possibilities we can develop to cause the relationship between the University and the fraternities and sororities to be more supportive of one another’s central mission.

The third task force shall be one addressing the need for leadership among all of our student body. What I have in mind is an attempt to get at what we know to be true: too often the campus leadership does understand the magnitude of the problems I have been discussing but they have a difficult time getting that message to filter down to the entire student body. Perhaps there are things we can do together to develop the kind of leadership skills sophomores and juniors must have if they take on leadership roles in the houses and in all our campus organizations.

There are many discussions we need to have in the future. They will proceed through the spring and through the fall. I ask one thing of you: as we begin these discussions, let’s stay on the subject. The subject is not whether or not we will have a Greek system. Indeed, we will have one. That’s not the issue. The subject is: what do we want our Greek system to be like? What values should it promote and how shall we deal with abuses of the common values of our community?

The fact that we need these discussions was brought home to me with the simple announcement that I would address the community today. Just the idea that the President would call the whole community together gave rise to many rumors. Some of you expected me to announce a dry campus--I have not. Others expected me to turn DePauw into a police state--I have not. Some have suggested that I mandate from on high that we will place University employees in all the living units--I have not done this. What I have attempted to do is to state that we have problems--you know we have problems and I know we have problems. We have to work them out together. No new set of rules will get at the root of our problem. The problem we face is to change the ethos of our community. The administration cannot do it for you; neither can the faculty. The responsibility genuinely rests upon you, our students, to define clearly what kind of community should DePauw be. What is our feeling about the alcohol abuse and what we can do before injuries or even deaths occur on our campus?

We have made many improvements in DePauw in the past decade, but our new art building, the renovated Julian Science and Mathematics Center, the Indoor Tennis and Track Center, becoming a more selective University--none of these things will be remembered if we cannot combat the alcohol abuse. All it takes to forever tarnish the image of DePauw is to let alcohol abuse result in serious injury or death to one of our students.

We have many issues to face. In Pat Owen’s interview with some of you, some students said there is no solution to the problem, everything has been tried and nothing works. Breaking the pattern will be difficult. Indeed, it will be. But we must find together incentives to reward those who are brave enough to help us improve the DePauw culture.

All of the reports I have mentioned are available to the community. When you read them, you will find that not all the information in them is correct and you will agree with some points and disagree on others. But the general picture is true--we have some things to be embarrassed about. As you reflect upon these reports and the words I have shared with you today, I encourage you to share your thoughts directly with me so I can, in turn, share your concerns and potential solutions with the Coalition. You may direct your suggestions and comments to coalition@depauw.edu.

In closing, let me say we also have many things to be proud of and I would simply cite one. One of the aspects most student organizations and most Greek units adhere to in their charter is somehow coming together to serve others. The community at DePauw has done this in a magnificent way in working with Relay for Life. This has become not only a means to raise over $100,000 a year for cancer research, but also a means to involve all aspects of the DePauw community--unaffiliated students, Greek students, townspeople, faculty and staff--toward a common goal. If we can do this to fight cancer, we can do this to fight alcohol abuse. I ask you to join with me in this important work. DePauw is too fine an institution to allow some abuses, which we can handle if we have a strong will, to destroy the very values we say we hold most dear.

Thank you. I look forward to our working together.