Doug Duran/Times UC Berkeley Students (from left) Stephanie Davis 20, Elisa Huang 20, Andy Solari 22, and Casey Holt 21, walk past fraternities and sororities during their Greeks Advocating the Mature Management of Alcohol (GAMMA) program that polices fraternities and sororities for abusing the universities alcohol use guidelines. |
Looking back at UC Berkeley's history, it's easy to see where the "Animal House" stereotype of free-wheeling beerfests comes from:Hey, wait a minute! We had that one at my chapter!
• California legislators, shocked at seeing drunken students stumbling across the new Berkeley campus in 1873, established a 2-mile no-alcohol zone around the school. The zone was later reduced to 1 mile, then eliminated altogether.
• In 1937, besotted Cal fans rioted several times after football games, overturning streetcars in downtown Berkeley.
• In 1956, a drunken mob conducted a mass panty raid in female dormitories and sorority houses in Berkeley. University police later collected more than 1,000 female undergarments.
Several UC Berkeley songs from the early 20th century extol the virtues of heavy drinking. Among them is the California Drinking Song.
"Drink, drank, drunk last night, drunk the night before," the lyrics read. "Gonna get drunk tonight like I never got drunk before."
So what has happened lately?
If anything has changed in the world of college drinking over the past few decades, it's schools' tolerance level for alcohol use. Several colleges, worried about liability, health issues and public image, have cracked down on student drinking over the past year.Those administrators are so narrow minded.
Fraternities and sororities have borne the brunt of these crackdowns at many schools.
Last year, UC Berkeley fraternities and sororities were banned temporarily from drinking in the wake of several alcohol-related incidents. Chico State also tightened restrictions on campus Greeks, while Harvard and Yale tried to combat alcohol use associated with football games.
The Berkeley ban didn't go over well with Greek leaders, who thought they could better handle the problems themselves.
"People drink in the dorms, people drink in apartments, people drink in fraternities," said Andy Solari, whose one-year term in charge of the 33-member Inter-Fraternity Council ended in December. "But fraternities have found a good way to regulate it. I've always felt it's safer in the Greek community."
Administrators disagreed, however, and forced Greeks to crack down after a fraternity pledge was shot 30 times with a pellet gun during an alcohol-fueled hazing. New rules call for fraternity leaders to better control parties and prevent underage and excessive drinking.
ContraCostaTimes.com | 01/15/2006 | College drinking ingrained in culture
Tags: Berkeley, college, fraternity, alcohol
