Theo Baker

all facets of the student experience, right?

Everything.

Every action you can take as a student is governed by some web page.

You know, like you officially can't make more than 55 decibels of noise after 10 p.m.

And like the conversation that you and I are having right now is probably around 70 decibels, right?

And so it's all of these things.

You know, alcohol is part of it.

You know, the way that they've cracked down on drinking has made things less safe in the words of safety advocates because, you know...

There's no alcohol at any parties, and you can't drink in front of your RAs, so kids are taking six shots in a row in their room, and they're ending up drunk in bushes, and there's an increasing rate of so-called transports, which is the euphemism for hospitalization due to alcohol poisoning.

You literally have to take a class and pass an exam to be able to apply to host a social event now, three weeks in advance to the so-called party review committee.

And that includes, by the way, an off-campus event.

You can't host an off-campus event without applying to the party review committee and providing the quote-unquote harm reduction plan.

And that's the thing, right?

If you have to get six different university departments to sign off on putting up 10 balloons in your dorm, you know, there are so few parties approved that the one, the sole party that's happening in a weekend will have 600 people, you know, trying to slam through the doors and the fire safety risk will actually be far higher, right?

So it's this interesting mix of appearance versus reality.

And

It was also an early lesson in how the school would react to my reporting when the school learned that I'd spoken with employees of the Office of Alcohol Policy who criticized the school's own policies as hopelessly out of touch with reality.

They sent an email to a group of employees they suspected of having leaked to me and said that someone had violated the policies that their employment was contingent upon.

And I went through their policies.

I was provided the training materials and the contracts by people who worked for the office.