Waters to Wine: In search of a "balance"

As somewhat of an addendum to my previous column about the Community Council’s so-called review of keg policy, I thought I might lend my voice to the debate about alcohol that has been raging — probably unnoticed — in these pages for weeks. As The Campus’ alcohol columnist, it is my duty to reiterate points already made, further polarize arguments and alter the level of discourse to my own designs. But I digress.

Most of the current uproar stems from an article published in The Campus’ Feb. 11 issue, titled “Scholars debate U.S. drinking age.” The article reported on the lecture, “From Global to Local: Understanding the Success of the 21-Year-Old Minimum Legal Drinking Age,” a statistics-laden address delivered by two experts on the issue, who, based on the title, helped everyone understand (what they perceived to be) the success of the 21-year-old minimum legal drinking age.

In addition to sparing my readers any rehashing of the details (because the only thing less interesting to most students than this week’s Campus news is last week’s Campus news), I’ll spare everyone my critical response to the lecture, as Nick Alexander ’10 has already ably refuted many of the arguments in his Feb. 18 op-ed.

Instead, I’d like to stab at the heart of the issue, the woman who brought the lecture to campus –— and who seems to be waging a not-so-clandestine war on drinking at Middlebury — Jyoti Daniere. Many of you may know Jyoti as the woman behind “Let’s Talk About Sex” Month and all other activities intended to jump-start our libidos, as well as the woman responsible for clogging up our inboxes with the latest dispatch from the Office for Health and Wellness Education (sorry, Midd-kids, but with the combination of sex and spam, it looks like it is in fact Jyoti Daniere who “gets in box like Gmail” ...). However, few of you may realize that in contrast to her pro-sex message, Daniere is notoriously conservative in regards to collegiate drinking culture.

To me, these disparate views on two related issues seem the mark of a hypocrite. For only a hypocrite could be quoted in the same paper (Feb. 11) as advocating for more balance and less stress for students, saying, “Priorities should be established, thereby balancing the pressure to achieve and excel with the necessity of joy in one’s life,” while then (in another article) stating, “there is ample research showing that the more a student drinks, the lower his or her GPA ... a fact that may be of interest to all our hardworking students,” thereby bringing the discussion back from joy to GPA. Further, her “Campus Character” profile in the aforementioned issue makes for wonderfully entertaining reading, with additional quotes that make Daniere appear as out of touch with the general student zeitgeist as does her choice of e-mail fonts.

Daniere has made her name (and what a difficult one it is) as an advocate for increased dating and healthier sex lives on campus, a goal with which I take no issue. However, what I do have trouble understanding is her vendetta against collegiate drinking in all its forms; one would assume that a person so progressive in her attitudes toward sex might be similarly inclined to reconsider our notions about alcohol. Instead, Daniere seems to see drinking as at the very bottom of what ails our dating culture (or supposed lack thereof). And while it may play a part, I think that encouraging more freedom on the one hand while restricting the other seems a woefully unbalanced policy. Much of the real reason for our campus’ primitive attitudes toward sexuality and dating stems from our society’s puritanical and undeveloped attitudes towards sex; might our problems with drinking stem from a similar attitude? I’m for increased freedom in both venues, be it the bedroom or the bar-room. Instead of demanding “balance” only to stipulate which kinds of balance are acceptable, perhaps we should all relax, unwind and just do what feels good.

Of course, we can file this all away with the other “Great Ideas Mike Has For Making His Middlebury Life Better,” along with no non-athletes in the dining hall after 6:30, rebreading the chicken parm in Proctor and eliminating the Office for Health and Wellness Education.