If the publicity hit Minnesota State University has borne over high-risk drinking has led the school to take a harder line on off-campus drinking, then it might be worth asking a question: How much of the problem are MSU students responsible for, and how much of the solution is their responsibility?
The school recently decided on academic sanctions for off-campus drinking violations. School intervention had typically been reserved for crimes with a more obvious tie-in to MSU, such as hazing, fraternity violations and students as victims.
But if underage drinking affects the university’s reputation as a center of learning, then it ought to be able to widen its jurisdiction to alcohol-rated offenses, officials reasoned. Minnesota public universities are allowed to punish behavior that “adversely affects educational, research or service functions.”
Most young people who are arrested in Mankato, though, aren’t MSU students.
“I think a lot of residents tend to lump the folks who might be in that age group as MSU students. That’s not really fair or accurate,” said Ryan Anderson, president of the Minnesota State Student Association.
In an average month from August of last year through this July, MSU students were responsible for 34.25 percent of arrests for people aged 18 to 24.
That proportion was 43 percent during this year’s homecoming week, and 29 percent for 2007’s homecoming.
Stephen Woehrle, an MSU accounting professor and longtime observer of the downtown drinking scene, offers some analysis as to why students cause a minority of crime but perhaps constitute a majority of drinkers.
“What I kinda see is that I think a lot of these students, most of them have a purpose for being here and they’re probably fairly good people,” he said.
Their presence, however, attracts those who “come to town here to see the train wreck, and participate in it.” If, then, MSU students aren’t responsible for most of the problem, why should they bear the responsibility for fixing it?
After all, Anderson says, there has been much talk of high-risk drinking as a “community-wide problem,” but as it stands now a student faces more sanctions than a non-student for the same offense.
It would be the student association’s preference that the city keep its $262 fee for first-time underage citations, then target repeat offenders with tougher sanctions.
Mary Dowd, MSU’s director of student rights and responsibilities, agreed it would be preferable to have all alcohol violations, student or not, treated the same way.
“I don’t know why we wouldn’t want a non-student to have education” on high-risk drinking, she said. So far this year, 126 students have taken the Web-based eCHUG course for first-time offenders.
One person has been suspended.
The school’s educational sanctions are research-based programs that have been shown to work elsewhere, Dowd said.
MSU is “cautiously optimistic” after preliminary data are showing a 21 percent drop in alcohol-related offenses over the first two months or so of school this year compared to last year, Dowd said. That isn’t enough data to show a meaningful trend, she said.
City Manager Pat Hentges says there are barriers to a citywide strategy that treats everyone equally, he said.
First, the city can’t sanction juveniles.
And the city doesn’t arrest everyone; a meaningful change would have to involve other law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and the rest of the judicial system.
As an aside, Hentges notes that while colleges have leverage over students academically, employers have their own consequences for high-risk drinking, so students’ penalties may not be as unfair as it seems to them.
Still, he said such an educational program would be a “good idea” given that escalating fines alone don’t seem to work for everybody.
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