op-ed Discretion not destruction

Author: David Infante

Two weeks ago, coming off the thrill of Rites of Spring, I couldn't help but get excited when I heard about another off-campus party. For the first time in a while, the social scene here at Middlebury had picked up. Instead of the morbid curiosity with which I approach most weekends here, I was faced with a sense of anticipation and hope at the tantalizing possibility of two consecutive weekends of merriment. Rites of Spring was without question the best night I have had at Middlebury since arriving here in September, so when the invitation was extended for another round of off-campus festivity, I eagerly grabbed a hold of it. Nothing could bring down my mood all week - tales of police presence at Angela's and hefty tickets for drinking violations were overshadowed by the promise of ridiculousness that Two-House Palooza had in store. The night of the party, however, I hopped on the bus and took a fifteen minute bus ride directly into what I can only describe as the most depressing, discouraging and utterly demoralizing scene of bad judgment and poor discretion I have ever come across. All the arrests in town and the rumors circulating about the liquor inspector's penchant for absurdity were the writing on the wall that finally hit me and the other would-be guests of Two-House Palooza, in full force on that Saturday night. But the fact that the party was cancelled pales in comparison when one considers the incredibly poor foresight with which Michael G. Davidson, Rutland County's illustrious liquor investigator, conducts his operations.

After Two-House Palooza got shut down for what came off as petty and feeble reasons from Davidson (including the insistence that if the hosts of the party were unable to name and account for every guest in the four-hundred plus group en route, no one could leave the buses), the man continued to pour it on, commanding the police crew he had recruited for his crusade on happiness to stay long after the buses and most of the occupants of the house had left in an effort to ensure that none of the kegs left the property. This time, Davidson outdid even himself, rationalizing the decision with a confident assertion that because the kegs all belonged to one person, and one person could not feasibly drink the contents of a full twenty kegs, underage drinking was most certainly afoot. Not on Mike's watch.

Sure, I get a sort of morose kick out of the most recent of Davidson's conquests. I've spent a good deal of time in the past week or so trying to figure out how this man manages to take himself so seriously given the situation at hand, but it's kind of hard to come up with anything without laughing. I mean, come on Mike, this is a college town. Fine, the law says no one under 21 gets a beer, but underage drinking is ingrained in the culture of college life, and regardless of the power so impressively wielded down at Angela's, it goes on here. What good could possibly come of this campaign? Actually, the only thing I see resulting from Davidson's actions over the past month and a half or so, at Two-House Palooza and elsewhere throughout town, is a dangerous situation that the college is going to struggle with in the future. Davidson was kind enough to get the ball rolling on the disaster that Saturday night - when the party got shut down, four hundred students returned to campus completely sober. Coupled with the fact that we had just spent a riveting forty-five minutes on cramped school buses with intermittent updates from the party hosts as to Davidson's most recent outlandishness, the motivation to drink hard was prevalent.

At Two-House Palooza, only beer was to be available. The twenty kegs purchased were the only form of alcohol available to the guests in an attempt to ensure that everyone's night was without the threat of hard alcohol. Back at school, kids had whatever they could get their hands on, and barricaded themselves in rooms as the pre-gaming commenced. Down at Atwater, the kids that made it out were horribly drunk, and the situation was compounded by the fact that in the suites you couldn't move more than six inches in either direction without receiving an elbow directly to the spine. Stuff flying out of windows, students stumbling down stairs, the whole deal. The night, which started down the path that Rites of Spring had blazed the weekend before, became a mad drunken mess of anguish and hatred for the Mike Davidson, the man who barred us at the gates of revelry with convoluted arguments and uncooperative resolve. Obviously, the law is the law - I'm not looking to change that. The one thing I would hope to see out of a man who calls himself an "investigator" is some discretion in these cases. The cause and effect of this sort of unilateral, "all-21-all-the-time" battle that Davidson is waging on the college community is pretty readily apparent: strict enforcement of the current alcohol regulations can lead to dangerous, out-of-control situations that would probably be better handled with an enforcement policy focused on safety rather than the letter of the law.

I'm no investigator, but it doesn't take an expert in the field to see where this college is headed under Davidson's misguided guidance. He's already entrenched himself as an enemy of the traditional college experience, and isn't particularly well-liked on campus. When a bus full of students drives by screaming obscenities at you and questioning your judgment, you chalk it up to the heat of the moment. It comes with the territory. But when the college paper at the school you seem to have taken a specific interest in runs a cartoon of you as the devil, it's probably time to reevaluate the way you interact with the people you're supposed to be serving. I'm not entirely sure why Davidson's warring with convention, or why he's so adamant in sticking with such a narrow interpretation of the drinking laws around here, but when he keeps breaking up parties he comes off as something of a vigilante extremist. I'd like to be the first to say I'm not entirely thrilled with the prospect of another three years with Davidson hovering about ready to cite minor infractions, but at least there will be something ridiculous to marvel at as Middlebury's social life falls by the wayside.

David Infante is a first-year

from Chester, N.J.