Checking in on the Party Monitor proposal

April Fools’ Day at the ‘Prince.’

The Alcohol Coalition Committee Party Registration Group is a small committee made up of students, administrators, professors, Public Safety officers and McCosh staff from the larger Alcohol Coalition Committee body. The students on this committee are unanimously onboard with every aspect of the new system, and to address the concern that these students represent only the non-drinking nerd-burglar contingent of our campus, please note that our meeting time had to be switched from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays to accommodate the student members’ Thursday night schedules.

As has been previously stated, the Party Registration “policy” is not new. Groups of students age 21 and older do currently register parties with the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (e.g. the infamous Techno Tuesdays), but the process had been complicated and un-standardized. We have merely set up a system through which this policy can work.

The new Party Registration system works like this: Students who wish to have a party with more than 15 guests — all over age 21 — must register their party. All room residents are considered hosts unless some choose to explicitly opt out and absent themselves from the room. Hosts are responsible for “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities” violations as well as for the safety of their guests. “Party Monitors” are students who will come by once or twice a night to make sure everything is OK. They will be looking for people passed-out on couches, stumbling into walls, sitting with their eyes rolled back into their heads, as well as other evidence of high-risk or underage drinking. The Monitors’ responses to what they see will span from “Hey Mr. Host, that guy’s had enough; get him some water, and don’t let him drink more,” to “Hey Mr. Host, you can’t be playing that game. I’ll be back in a few minutes to make sure you’ve put it all away,” to “Hey Mr. Host, this is out of hand, shut this party down.” If the host does not respect the Party Monitor’s authority, the Monitor will call Public Safety for help.

Hopefully, it is clear from all this that the Party Registration Group’s goal is to move toward a more responsible, student-regulated drinking environment. The role of the Party Monitor is not disciplinary, but really to help guide students who are not familiar with the responsibilities that come with hosting a party.

The most important point has yet to be addressed. The typical student reaction to this system, according to already-published articles, is that “This isn’t going to make much of a difference because it doesn’t address mixed-age parties.” Well, of course. Along with every single person on the committee (faculty, staff and administrators alike), I understand that the ultimate goal is to institute some kind of policy that allows for mixed-age parties. In fact, all of us are disappointed that we could not have bypassed 21-and-over and skipped right to a mixed-age system. But students must understand that this 21-and-over system is a necessary precursor to the system we all want.

Call this a pilot program, call it legal self-protection, call it political accommodation if you will, because it is partly all of those things, but don’t criticize this system as the administration’s “solution” to anything. This is only a first step in the right direction. So have a little patience, register some parties, and help prove this system works so that we can get back to work on the mixed-age system everybody wants to see.

Harry Schiff is a psychology major from Montreal. He can be reached at hschiff@princeton.edu.