NOTES FROM THE DESK

Author: Andrea Glaessner '08.5

What does it take to learn a lesson in life? When you were in high school, and you got caught drinking by your parents, it took a long grounding to realize it is a real pain to get caught - better be stealthier next time. But what if the cops nabbed you instead? A lesson dealt by the law is a lot harder than getting grounded, and if the system prevails, instead of learning how not to get caught, your run-in with the law should have taught you that you may need to re-evaluate your behavior under the influence of alcohol.

There is little question as to the legal system's authority to hold you responsible for your actions, but what about your school, especially if you are off campus and out of the jurisdiction of campus security? As a private institution, Middlebury may have the right to punish its students when they are off campus, but is this really necessary and is it really fair?

Consider a situation involving students in a drunken altercation off campus. If the police apprehend those students, they should face assault charges or disorderly conduct, and hence a harsh punishment imposed by the legal system. But in Middlebury, one never knows who will be the judge. Sometimes the police take the easy way out: drop the students off in the drunk tank in Rutland and let the school take it from there.

The students would face the Judicial Board, and thus additional punishment in the form of suspension or expulsion, which is two-fold considering the $20,000 plus loss of tuition money and the interruption of academic studies, and then remorse that one drunken mistake resulted in such a traumatic downfall.

Sometimes a suspension, and thus a $20,000 lesson, is necessary for a student to reevaluate his life and make concrete changes. But in an off-campus crime, how is the school in any way qualified to decide whether the legal system has done its job, and how are the Middlebury police justified in deciding when to enforce the law and when pass the work on to the College instead? Seems like if the police did their job properly and enforced the law, the school could keep their jurisdiction to on campus violations where it should be.

-Andrea Glaessner '08.5

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