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Director of public safety Jack Luippold '88G

Imagine a city of 25,000, at least half of whose residents are legally children, psychologically adolescent, and in their own minds full-fledged adults. Every year, a fresh wave of such residents arrives to experience the great contradiction of this city: since the earliest days of their lives, they have been ingesting images linking alcohol to the kinds of fun this age-group craves; yet, arriving two or three years before the law allows them to partake, they must either divert their natural curiosity and abstain from that brand of fun, or they must spend a number of years living dishonestly.

Charged with standing guard over the safety of this city is UMass police chief John W. "Jack" Luippold Jr., forty-two. He, too, must maneuver the contradictions of a society confused about alcohol. As director of public safety, Luippold's job is, unequivocally, to enforce the laws on underage drinking. Yet to carry out the absolute letter of that law would mean stationing an officer outside every residence hall door on Thursday through Saturday nights, when Luippold is very aware that bulging backpacks do not necessarily contain textbooks, that bottles procured off-campus with fake IDs are being raised in student dorm rooms.

Even if he wanted towhich he says he emphatically does not, out of respect for broader constitutional rightsthe law limits the power of Luippold or his officers to search those backpacks or enter at random into those rooms. And so the chief's job is to walk a fine line. Take one step too far toward upholding the law, and you are accused of running a police state. Fail to be everywhere at all times, and when something does go wronga frat party stabbing, a deathit is on your shoulders to explain why it happened.

For someone who's spent twenty-one years negotiating these conundrums, Jack Luippold retains an almost boyish mien. His gingery coloring and easygoing gait conjure up someone whose youth was spent in sandlots (which in fact his was, in his native Greenfield). He came to the UMass police department while still earning his undergraduate degree at Westfield State, and earned a master's from UMass while employed full-time as an officer here. Though he is more at the desk than on the street these days, there is no sign of the paunch that afflicts many an officer-turned-administrator. He is a soft speaker and a spacious listener. Whether conversing in his office or intercepting a drunk driver on a Friday night, he seems bolstered by some private source of strengtha mental or physical discipline, perhaps, or a satisfying family life. He is a husband and the father of two preschool-age children, but, like many policemen, deflects inquiry away from his family, and indeed from himself.

"I prefer to talk in terms of 'we,'" he says, and "we" is the UMass police: the diverse force of ninety-six men and women whose job it is to keep the peace in this city-within-a-town. Luippold frets like a big brother for his officers, aware that he sends them out every day and night on assignments that offer no clearcut course of action. When it comes to sexual abuse, date rape, domestic violence, and stalking, the law and social attitudes are like constantly shifting sand. In the wee hours of the night, police may obtain from one judge an emergency restraining order against a student threatening a girlfriend a floor or two down in JQA. The next morning, another judge may overturn the order on the grounds that a dormitory is not a household.

Luippold's goal, then, is to engage his department in active, positive relationships with the UMass community. His officers invest huge amounts of time in programs like the RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) course, and in building a salutary presence on horseback, bicycle, and foot. Luippold himself has kept up his long-standing practice of holding open office hours every Wednesday night and hits the street, as the highways and byways of the campus are known to the force, as his schedule allows. For all this, Luippold's officers have been jumped, kicked, verbally attacked and laid up for months by young people under academic, social, and hormonal duress.

And under the influence of alcohol. Among all the influences UMass police must deal with, alcohol looms largest. Among the three or four arrests that take place on an average weekend night, two or three involve behavior uncapped by drinking.

"I've spent a good part of my life looking toward the weekend with anxiety," says Luippold. "No matter how many times I do it, I still feel my blood pressure start to rise Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, knowing there are going to be a number of situations our officers are going to encounter, that they are going to be busy, and that they are in a fishbowl with every decision they make."

Date: Saturday, May 2, 1998
Place: Hobart Lane, North Amherst
Event: The Hobart Hoedown

A rainy Saturday around noon. Waves of students hurry up North Pleasant Street toward the irresistable magnets of Bud, babes, and bacchanalia. On Hobart Lane, a dead-end street of some half-dozen apartment houses across the street from the Puffton Village complex, amplifiers propped in open windows vie for highest decibel level. Upwards of 1,000 young revelers swill beer, block every doorway, choke the street. The lawns are a bog of mud and plastic cups. The two main activities are mudball-lobbing and mudwrestling. Men pull women down, women grab at men, and those left standing pour beer on the groping contestants. Fearing a riot if they began breaking up the party, and receiving no formal complaint that might prompt action, the few police officers on hand stand looking on, their faces furious under the brims of their caps.

Number of arrests: 35
Number of injuries: 6
Estimated cost in damages: $10,000

---

Date: Saturday, May 2, 1998
Place: Hobart Lane, North Amherst
Event: In the words of one local
reporter, the Hobart "No-Show-
Down"

A balmy noontime dominated by blue skies and blue uniforms. The ratio of police to students is approximately one to one. A checkpoint at the entrance to the cul-de-sac stops any vehicle attempting to turn in, and only those on a list of residents and approved guests are allowed to proceed. All up and down the street and up the hill behind the complexes stand clusters of officers chatting about summer plans and IRA investments. Alongside the orange snow-fencing that barricades the largest of the apartment buildings, an idle ambulance stands by. Students toss a Frisbee, sit around on couches drinking mineral water, chat companionably with officers. The hottest spot on the street is a driveway where a half-dozen young men and a bandana-wearing mutt are milling around.

"We're having our own personal Hoedown," sniggers one, sipping his Lite.

"It's still early," observes another.

Someone suggests music to get things going. When a couple of high-school-age girls drift across the lawn, the men call out hopefully, "Here for the Hoedown?"

They are, but as bottle collectors, not as revelers, and they are accompanied by an older man clutching a bunch of Hefty bags. Surveying the veritable sheepfold of inactivity and concluding that this scene is not going to generate last year's heap of recyclables, the trio soon splits.

Total injuries: 0
Total arrests: 0
Total damages: $0 (Total cost of
police coverage, however,
$14,105.12)

OVER THE FIFTEEN OR SO years of its existence, the Hobart Hoedown has become the symbol of just about every orgiastic extreme of which UMass students are capable. Its shutdown this spring was a ray of hope to many that "something can be done" about student partying.

"One thing we can say for sure is the event did not occur," says assistant dean of students Paul Vasconcellos, who was one of more than forty participants in a new Amherst Community Policing Problem-Solving Partnership, which brought together, last winter, all the factions that have suffered separately the effects of student rowdyism for years: the university, local police, landlords, residents, and even the PVTA, whose buses must ferry bilious students to and from festivities until the dead of night.

The victory of moderation over mayhem wasn't accomplished without its own share of mud-slinging. Students were upset by measures taken to quash the Hoedown weeks before it happened: letters from the dean's office, from police, and from landlords threatening to terminate leases and withhold security deposits if the Hoedown occurred. A security company hired by one landlordwho had to power-wash his buildings and have lawns re-sodded after last year's merrymakingbegan monitoring the apartments in early April, and two eviction notices for noise complaints were already in the works when the Hoedown weekend arrived. Student residents protested that they felt blackballed simply for living on the wrong street; they had no control over the twelve-pack-bearing huns and visigoths who descended spontaneously every year. They were particularly livid over the twenty-five state troopers patrolling North Pleasant or poised at the North Amherst Fire Station to step in for crowd control.

The partnership was the first official collaboration of two parties who have historically pointed a finger at each other over the issue of student drinking. UMass resents the accusation that it drove the problem off campus when it closed most of its bars shortly after the drinking age was raised by the legislature. Townsfolk fault UMass for a see-no-evil-hear-no-evil attitude allowing students to have all kinds of fun on their private property. But the two sides hung in there to piece together the party-ending strategy. An additional result of the talks is that the Code of Student Conduct applies for the first time to off-campus residents and behaviors.

That town and gown could cooperate to control the Hoedown has pleased many, and amazed some, who doubted their ability to find common ground. There's always next spring, of course, but the partnership will continue meeting at least through the summer. Paul Vasconcellos says he's proud UMass took a stand against excess, but wants the focus to now shift away from North Amherst's "party central."

"In hindsight it was unfortunate to target a certain neighborhood," he said. "We wanted to say the event is the problem, not the students who live on Hobart Lane."

His driver's license gives his date of birth as April 1979, but there he is, barely nineteen and drunk behind the wheel of a late-model sedan parked sloppily against the curb at the Stadium Drive bus stop, head tilted back against the headrest as if he were nodding off at home in a Barcalounger. A kid in a Nike cap is yelling at him through one of the wide-open doors, though whether the shouts are intended to rouse the sleeper or start a fight is difficult to tell. When UMass police officers Kelson Ting and John Quinn arrive, a clutch of young women who have been spectating backs away and begins looking anxiously up the road for the midnight shuttle.

From the bus stop shelter, a couple of cans of beer and a Tropicana bottle a third full of some libation are retrieved. The officers help the young man out of the car. He is trying hard to look normal, but as he's guided over to the cruiser, most of his available energy is going into the job of remaining upright.

"Have you been drinking tonight?" asks Ting.

"No."

Ting tells the student that he'd like him to take a field sobriety test requiring that he blow into a device, but explains that he has the choice of refusing. "Do you choose, or refuse, to take this test?"

The young man struggles to match Ting's question with a correct answer. He says, finally, "I refuse." He is not free to decline the coordination part of the test, however, and this he fails roundly. The heel-to-toe walk in a straight line he performs like a four-year-old on a balance beam. Next he is instructed to stand straight, arms out to the side, head tilted back, and touch the tip of his nose with his two forefingers, alternately, ten times.

The wheels of comprehension are gummed up by so much information. The youth asks Ting to repeat the instructions, and though Ting goes over them again slowly, and despite excruciating attempts, he loses concentration.

"Thirteen, fourteen..."

"You were asked to count to ten. Now I can tell you lied to me," says Ting. "You smell like booze."

The student begins a feeble protest, but Ting is testy now. "I don't want any argument from you, because I can throw you in jail. We're not here to bust your balls, man. The bottom line is we want you to be safe. I want you to know I'm giving you a major break here. Your friends are going to park your car for you and you're going to go home."

As the student weaves off into the shadows toward the bright beacon of Southwest, Ting shakes his head. It probably would have been a more valuable learning experience for the kid had he been arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcoholan expensive reminder that would have endured beyond the next day's hangover. In the end, it was a couple of technicalities, more than the desire to give a break, that prevented the officers from providing that memento. Though alcohol was on the scene, it wasn't in the car. And the engine wasn't running when the officers arrived.

Problems caused by student drinking are pandemic at UMass. In this, the campus differs little from others of its size and kind, and in some ways things are better here. UMass was not among the names that appeared in national headlines about student rioting this spring. Though students' alcohol use keeps police busyof 153 arrests by UMass police last semester, 120 were related to drinking in one way or anotherit did not cause students in Amherst to flip and burn cars (as happened at UConn), pelt police with bottles and pieces of asphalt (Ohio University), or stage five-hour standoffs that sent twenty-four officers to the hospital (Washington State). UMass greeks were not the ones hazing people to death in drinking competitions (MIT and Louisiana State).

In fact, UMass figures for binge drinking are somewhat lower than the national average. In his oft-quoted studies of college drinking patterns, Henry Wechsler of Harvard University found that 39 percent of UMass students reported regular binging as compared to 44 percent nationwide. There is a growing group of teetotalers on campus. And, as one person piped up in the name of fairness, during the interviews I conducted last spring, "The statistics don't reflect the friends who are having a beer and watching a video."

Still, there is plenty to worry us. Of eight student deaths this year at UMass, several involved alcohol or drug use. (The exact number is unclear, because it is up to individual families to make the deceased's blood alcohol levels public.) A brawl led to a stabbing outside the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in March. Another greek house, Theta Chi, became the subject of an embarrassing probe for running an illegal bar and admitting 300-odd guests with nary a glance at IDs. A ban on alcohol at tailgate parties during sports events caused an uproar, not least from alumni who didn't want the tradition of knocking back a few brews at the old stomping grounds tampered with.

Every year or two, some tragedy happensdifferent plot, same theme: a student dies while surfing the elevators, another is paralyzed after diving into Campus Pond in a moment of glee. These are just the sensational cases. But they point to a pervasiveness of alcohol use and abuse that prompted a concerned Chancellor Scott to call for the third review in eleven years of UMass alcohol policies.

"Of the 86 percent of students who drink on campus, only a small number are problem drinkers," said Pamela Gonyer `68, who has had her finger on the pulse of student drinking for seventeen years as a health educator, and before that as a student herself. "But it seems to me that the extremes are worse. Just the amounts they consumeforty or fifty shots in an evening! The people who drink heavily are drinking more heavily and engaging in more violent behavior."

Call it the copycat phenomeon or some other force that worms its way through the collective unconscious, but Police Chief Jack Luippold wonders how long it will be before UMass heats up in the way that other campuses have. "I worry that there are similarities in what's happening on college campuses, that we could be touched by the same thing," said Luippold as he made the rounds one weekend night. "It's frightening, the levels of vandalism, the responses needed by police, and all of it around alcohol. What's the match that's going to strike the same thing on this campus?"

When it comes to trying to understand what pushes students to increase their drinking from having a cold one with friends to engaging in the kind of public drunkenness that can be noticed by anyone who happens to be on campus after midnight on weekend nights, Luippold is mystified. "We don't spend a lot of time with the whys," he says regretfully.

Who does have time to contemplate the whysor if they do, is not stumped for satisfactory answers? Certainly not the housekeeper who confides that she brings home an extra $30 or $40 a week from deposits on bottles and cans collected from residence hall wastebaskets. Not resident assistants who scrub up messes they want to spare the housekeeping staff. Not Billy Coleman, who has spent four years watching the sun come up as a driver of the UMass escort van. One night in May, Coleman had no sooner loaded his van at Campus Center when students began yelling for him to stop, let them out, a girl was throwing up. He drove the empty van back to the police station, where he sprinkled D-Vour on the carpet and flushed it out with a hose. The students had been at a concertone of about five university-sponsored, alcohol-free events going on that night, including comedian Joe Bellamy and the road version of Cats. (So much for the "We drink because there's nothing else to do" rationale.)

Dr. Pierre Rouzier doesn't have much time to analyze the whys either. "I unfortunately have as much experience as anyone could with alcohol-related problems," said Rouzier, who has cared for the poor and broken-spirited in rural Colorado and on Apache reservations in Arizona. But he had never before worked on a college campus, and when he came to University Health Services as a staff physician a year and a half ago, he was "surprised, astounded" by what he saw. " You spend a weekend on call, and how many kids come in who have been in a fight, how many things are broken . . . " Of seventy-six cases of alcohol poisoning, accidents, and injuries that sent students to urgent care on last semester, Rouzier and his colleagues deemed twenty of them serious enough to require hospitalization.

In sociology classrooms he visits to give a doctor's eye view of the party scene, Rouzier disagrees with students who say they feel entitled to four years of free-range hormones and high jinx. He challenges their insistence that "We're only drinking like this for four years; when we graduate, we'll stop."

"I tell them the habits you gain as a young adult are the ones you're going to keep later," he says. "This is a time of emergence into adulthood. It's also a time people need to learn responsibility."

The first thing that greets the 15,000 or so eastbound vehicles rolling off the Coolidge Bridge in the direction of Amherst every day this summer is a billboard proclaiming that "Budweiser Salutes America's Responsible Drinkers." Although that's certainly an improvement over ads appearing earlier this year"Take One Down, Pass It Around," and those cute Bud bullfrogs so appealing to childrenit is typical of the mixed messages we all absorb daily about alcohol, says health educator Robin J. Harris, who works primarily with athletes.

"What's 'responsible' mean? `Don't get caught drinking and driving?'" she scoffs. "'Know when to say when?' I wish the colleges on this side of the river would buy that billboard and put the real facts of student drinking up there."

Media messages do offer one reason for the whys of epidemic drinking. Those messages are not only the overt ones about drinking-equals-fun, but about what's important in life: looking good, winning. Competition American-style is exhausting, stressful, and socially isolating, says Harris. Alcohol promises fast-acting relief from the by-products of our value system.

A commonly proffered solution is to let American children imbibe like Europeans, freely feeling their way into a relationship with vino, lager, or cerveza in the company of adults who enjoy it socially. However, says Harris, America would have to adopt the other major lifestyle differences that bespeak a more balanced pacetwo months' vacation, two-hour lunches, an authentic valuing of family life, and a disdain for fast food and other symbols of hasty living.

"By nature, Americans are consumers," maintains Harris, who spent portions of her childhood in Germany. "You don't go into European bars and see students doing keg stands"pouring beer straight from the tap into the mouth"and double shots." She cites a recent survey in which American college freshmen rank "to party" is the number-one reason for wanting a higher education. Given the cost of college today, that's one expensive way to drink, she says.

"At root is an active denial of our profound, yet utterly banal, abuses of alcohol as a society. Years and years of MADD, DARE and endless task forces later, we are still awash in confusion about the subject. `Boys will be boys' and `I was drunk' are still legitimate excuses for antisocial behavior. We are a society stoned on alcohol and on pharmaceuticals as well, not just at college but at every stage in the life cycle," says Harris.

And all forwhat? An intractable root of the problem of alcohol abuse among any age groupa point often neglected in the attempt to understand, contain, direct, limit, or otherwise control drinkingis why people do it in the first place. Drinking is effective, however briefly, in numbing pain, deflecting fear, enhancing pleasure, because it itself gives pleasure.

Last fall, I sat outside Hampshire Dining Hall at about 1:30 a.m., watching the river of students make its way back home after last call. Two beautiful young women came staggering up the steps arm in arm. Their progress, given the height of their heels and their condition, was laborious. When one tripped, the other fell down too, creating a tangle of arms and legs. One would push herself up and put out a hand to help her besotten sister. All the while they were laughing, doubled over in the kind of belly-laughs that many of the world's more solemn adults have long forgotten. As they reached the landing, one said, "I am sooooooo drunk. But I love this feeling. I just love this."

"People forget that," agrees Harris's colleague, alcohol counselor Sally Damon. "Unto itself, drinking is fun."

STUDENT DRINKING BY THE NUMBERS One evidence of UMass' concern with alcohol abuse is inclusion of questions about drinking in surveys conducted by SARIS (Student Affairs Research, Information and Systems) as a basis for policy and action. The data show that while our campus is no more troubled than others of its size, and that a majority of students are drinking responsibly or not at all, serious problems remain. * 44% described themselves as light drinkers * 42% described themselves as moderate drinkers * 15% said they do not drink at all * 8% said they are heavy or problem drinkers * Over one third of those who drink said they typically consume four-six drinks per sitting * 25% of males and 18% of females report they were intoxicated twice a week in the past month * 20% of males and 15% of females reported driving while intoxicated in the last year * 15% of students under age 21 report they have a fake identification card; 75% said they know someone who does From interviews conducted by Saris in 1996

 

A man enters a party in the company of his good friends Memory, Coordination, Self-control, and Health, and commences to toss down one drink after another. As he does so, his metaphorical friends teeter, sway, and topple to the floorcollapsing one by one with the cry, "With alcohol, I guess he won't be needing me." Finally the only friend left standing is Life Support, a quiet fellow who keeps our hero's vital organs pumping. As the reveler awakes in the morning next to a stranger, Health and Memory come groggily to consciousness too, saying, "He'll remember last night because she's a walking petri dish of STDs."

Calling on such dark twists of humor and Bunyanesque literary ploys to make its point, "Nothing to Lose" is one of twenty skits created by the Not Ready for Bedtime Playersa UMass-based troupe of ten student actors who pack the lobbies and lounges of a different residence hall or college every other week. The NRBP players push for responsible sexuality and substance use by conjuring up situations in which audience members might find themselves: uncomfortable dating situations, coming out as gay, or being pressured to use alcohol or other drugs.

The show started out as "The AIDS Follies" in the theater department in 1988, as a creative way to get students talking about risky lifestyles and behaviors. Alcohol, because it's the first thing to dissolve good judgment, inevitably came to play an important supporting role.

Audiences frequently take a blase stance when it comes to drinking, says NRBP manager Mike Harrigan"I drink all the time, I know this stuff," is a typical responsebut theater can penetrate defenses by touching emotional chords. Some people walk out, others burst into tears; players like Rob McDonald '98 and Emily Robertson '99 report being drawn aside in dining halls and classes by fellow students worried about what may have happened in a moment of unprotected passion or confessing a problem with controlling their drinking.

"The lessons we're trying to teach should be carried into the bars," said Brian Hayes, a junior whose three years with the NRBP have fuelled his ambition to be a public health educator. "Alcohol is huge on any campus, and at UMass it's definitely a big deal. We use entertainment because people listen to the way we present it, much more than if we presented it straight."

To witness the "straight" approaches to educating students about alcohol, take the elevator to the second floor of University Health Services and a little huddle of offices in the Health Education Department. This is the place to come if you finding yourself wanting to drink on Monday morning as well as Friday night, if you're an RA who's concerned about a student on your hall, if you're distracted from your studies because a family member can't get the monkey off his or her back. These offices are home to the Alcohol and Drug Education Program, which offers general information and counseling; the Residential Education Alcohol Program (REAP), which helps students who've been ordered by the courts to seek alcohol counseling; and the Employee Assistance Program, which provides referrals for professional treatment for faculty and staff.

If you've come looking for UMass's three full-time alcohol counselors, you probably won't find them there, at least not at the same time. Educator Sally Damon is off in one of the residence halls or fraternity or sorority houses leading one of her high-participation workshops on drinking responsibly, or training peer educators to do the same. Director of health education and outreach Pamela Gonyer is likely to be out in some corner of campus designing a new contraception education program or helping other departments improve their ability to deliver services to students. Educator Robin Harris is probably down at Boyden working with coaches, teams, and athletes in the Athletic Health Enhancement Program (AHEP). These are the university staff perhaps most likely to face such inquiries as, "Which will make me less sickdrinking beer before liquor, or liquor and then beer?" "Should I make myself throw up, or go to bed and wait?" "What if I throw up blood?"

For thirty years, the people at Health Education have been trying to answer such questions in as equable and effective a manner as possible. Every September brings a fresh complement of eager-to-start-living eighteen-year-olds, and every year these three staffers, with the help of the peer educators and RAs they train to be the first line of defense, set out to get a moment of their attention. Five years ago, the department deliberately merged several strands of its education into one presentation. Drinking, drugs, tobacco, and sex now fall together as a single topic loosely described as "lifestyle choices." But alcohol remains by far the most popular way to alter consciousness, and so is a focal point of the workshops and classes. Robin Harris calls it the "common denominator" that can easily lead to abuses of the others: many "non-smokers" light up over a glass of wine; smoking a joint doesn't seem like such a vice when considered through the gauze of a beer buzz; and many an incautious sexual interlude takes place between inebriated partners.

Alcohol education is no longer the ABC's of saintly living; today's high school students got those fundamentals in the DARE program, where they learned how horrible drinking is for their liver, how many brain cells per ounce of spirits. Gonyer, Harris and Damon are dubious about DARE's efficacy to begin with, pointing out that information alone doesn't change behavior and that children who receive the training are at a developmental stage where they are eager to please in any case. Arriving at UMass at a completely different stage in the psychological life cycle, our students are no longer looking for a gold star from a police officer. As she enters her workshops, Damon often has to make her way through an fog of palpable wariness from eighteen-year-olds who think they're going to be lectured by the vice squad. "They're nervous at first that you're going to say 'Just say no,' and `This is your brain on drugs'."

Educators take pains to assure students that Health Education is not an arm of the campus police, that they are not interested in nailing anyone for illicit activity. "We don't pay much attention to legality, we don't see ourselves as enforcing the laws," says Gonyer. "It's our goal to talk to students about what they're doing, to help them make better decisions, not be critical of what they're doing."

They tell students about the red flags, the things they might keep in mind as they observe their own behavior. "What situations are you putting yourself in? Are you getting arrested? Becoming violent? Blacking out or experiencing long gaps in memory on a regular basis?" says Robin Harris. "At some point, it really becomes more about harm reduction."

Students may be binge-drinking more, as Harvard University's Ronald Wechsler has shown, and alcohol-related deaths may be receiving more media attention. But the reality of excessive drinking has been a dominant theme for most of Health Education's thirty years, and a topic of general concern everywhere on campus. "It's been the constant topic of conversation," says Pam Gonyer.

Three different alcohol policies have been attempted at UMass. Gonyer, Damon, and Harris believe that the first two, in 1987 and 1993, never achieved even paper-tiger status. In fact, the second was never formally adopted by the Faculty Senate, in part because there weren't resources to implement or enforce it. "It became a kind of joke," says Gonyer.

Last fall, Chancellor David Scott called for campus alcohol policy to be reviewed after a flurry of media attention on college alcohol abuse, the death of a student in an accident that appeared to be alcohol-related, intractable tailgate parties at the UMass stadium, and "a sense that alcohol-related behavior was appearing more offensive to the community." While the task force of close to fifty people, including Gonyer and Damon, was "unwieldy," they say, it was the first time students were actively solicited as major authors of policy. "If the alcohol policy is going to be student-focused, it has to be the students' to shape," Gonyer says.

The task force met for months, finally arriving at a new policy that was due out this summer. Though she had not seen the final wording as this article was being prepared, Gonyer's sense was that this latest version differs from the previous ones because it "avoids absolutes and is not a policy of prohibition." Acknowedging that most students drink, the policy in the main directs energies toward managing, not denying, that reality.

"I think this newest policy actually has a chance of succeeding," Gonyer said.

Policies are important, and certainly it is better to have a document that reflects a community reaching, albeit gropingly, for a solution than nothing at all. But a few minutes' conversation with these three health educators yields the sense that they are in a no-win situation, and know it. Like garbage-truck drivers in an era of solid-waste crisis, they are responsible for a problem that is much larger than their sphere of operations.

There are moments when they feel outnumberedthree small Davids against a huge, tipsy Goliath. "We're it," says Gonyer, including herself and her two colleagues in a wide, embracing gesture. The phenomenon of student drinking is simply too pervasive to deal with once and for all. More staff would help, and this summer two more health educators will come on board. That still leaves many students unreached. "There are forty-five greek houses and how many floors on this campus?" Damon laughed with a little shrug. "Even if I went to one every day, I would still be reaching only a fraction of the students." Nor, of course, can it be assumed that all students "reached" by educators will absorb the assistance offered.

Our health educators point to pockets of optimism. Some in Congress are talking about rewardingeconomicallythose campuses that have effective alcohol programs, and that could yield much needed resources. And they point to a few daring campuses where housekeeping staff don't clean up all weekenda draconian method that has proven quite effective in stimulating peer pressure to get students to literally clean up their acts.

A lower drinking age might siphon off some of the appeal of drinking as a form of rebellion, and open up opportunities for educators to "not go by an arbitrary law but teach them how to develop judgment." That's not to say the team of three want the gates of the city thrown open to revelry, not by any means. Smiling grimly as she ticked off the list of mob mayhem on campuses from UConn to Washington State this spring, Sally Damon noted, "In the 70s, students were protesting war and nuclear weapons. Now it's S.O.B.'Save Our Beer.' That's a little depressing."

Ryan Levesque '98 made his decision about drinking early in life: he wasn't going to do it. It was neither the sobering sermons of DARE nor high-school hangovers that made Levesque choose what he calls "the straightedge" life. It was his own family's genes, which, he says, have had an multigenerational love affair with the bottle. Tuning into the best literature on the subject, Levesque worried that he, too, could easily fall for the siren song of alcohol.

So when he transferred from UMass-Dartmouth to the Amherst campus, said Levesque this spring, he wondered how his abstemious ways would fit in. He'd seen a bit of partying when he visited his girlfriend here, "and that wasn't anything that appealed to me. I wanted to live with people who shared the same ideals."
On arrival, therefore, the Assonet native was thrilled to learn about the university's "Wellness floors"two hallways in Greenough set up just for students like him. Since the first of them opened in 1988 to provide a haven for students in recovery from substance abuse, the floors have also been home to those who refrain for personal, religious, or spiritual reasons. Rooms are in constant demand, with many students agreeing to live on the more party-oriented second and fourth floors until a bed opens up.

As Greenough residential director Erica Piedade notes, the vision for the Wellness floors goes beyond simple teetotaling. In the largest sense, living on Greenough 1 and 3 gives residents an opportunity to deepen their sense of wholenessphysical, mental, and emotional. On posters and in pamphlets, students are called to adopt healthy eating, positive attitudes, and an exercise regimen. Residents can choose to take a one-credit course taught by RDs and RAs and titled, "Wellness: Integrating Health Into All You Are." Students agree, in a written?contract, not to drink in their rooms and to hold their guests responsible for upholding the orderly standards of the floors. Social gatherings tend to cluster not around six-packs but around potlucks and coffee. It goes without saying that smoking is verboten.

"At college, we learn most of what we know outside the classroom, and most of all in the residence halls," says Piedade, a Ph.D. candidate who came to UMass to get her master's in public health. Fifteen years of working in state substance abuse programs had brought home to her an alarming truth: "One common thing
my clients reported was that their addictive behaviors started in high school or college," she says. "Some students leave their years here with a habit that is going to be so hard to break."

Audrey Oville '98 watched too many peers forming that habit even in high school. A classmate had to have her stomach pumped after a bad combination of drink and drugs, prompting Oville to strike inebriation from her list of desireable adolescent experiences. She credits her four years in Greenough with helping her suceed academicallythe whole reason she came to college. "People I meet say, 'How did you get stuck on a Wellness floor? Don't you want to move?' I tell them no way, I choose to live here," says Oville, adding gratefully, "I remember all my weekends."

The demand for healthy alternatives is on the rise; the overwhelming response to surveys in some dorms was for halls where students could get a reprieve from the distraction of partying and create a little island of serenity. The university has responded by converting three more floors to Wellness this fall, in Gorman, Field and Cashin.
"That certainly says to me that there are more people than we know who want clean and sober space, or who want the choice to drink in moderation," says Piedade, noting that the oft-quoted Wechsler study at Harvard showed 14 percent of college students don't drink at all. (A recent study at UMass, see sidebar above, yielded closely comparable figures, with 15 percent of students describing themselves as abstainers.)

Having a drink-and-drug-free living space doesn't do away with temptation altogether; drinking is a huge topic of conversation that students never tire of discussing. In her four years in Greenough, Oville was regularly challenged with comments like "How do you know you don't like to drink if you've never tried it?" As an RA, Levesque does rounds through Baker andunable to deny that those bulging backpacks being carried in at midnight on Saturday probably aren't full of books and that smell is probably not incense in the aid of meditationsays, "Everyone is doing it." He looks back on the months he spent on Greenough 4 while he was on the waiting list for a room on the Wellness floor below. He had a roommate who kept the fridge crammed with beer and sat in the window doing bong-hits. "Our lifestyles," he sighs, "were just really different."

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