Media briefing quotes from the chancellor

Here are some quotes from Chancellor John Wiley’s media briefing April 24 on the issue of high-risk drinking.

On the problem:

“The problem that we’re concerned about in the university community is high risk drinking – dangerous, extreme drunkenness that results in falls, accidents, injuries, fights, assaults, rapes, vandalism, excessive police overtime, and results repeatedly in our having to devote resources to babysitting drunks and cleaning up messes of various kinds, including physical messes and other consequences that flow from things that happen when people are drunk.”

On solutions:

“That’s the set of problems that we’re trying to address in effective ways. Not that we’re naïve enough to think that there’s any one answer or solution, but we’re trying to do every bit we can, every place we can think of to address this. We’re not talking about concern over mild inebriation or silliness or having fun or hijinks. We’re not talking primarily about drinking age-related issues. We’re talking about high risk drinking.”

“What we haven’t heard is any positive or constructive suggestions from the critics of our efforts to deal with this problem on what they think would be effective.”

On the definition of binge drinking

“There are all sorts of variables that determine what five drinks will do to you, so I would rather focus on the outcomes. I begin to get concerned when someone has had enough alcohol in a short enough time that they’ve lost control of their speech or their vision or their motor control, their ability to walk, their ability to control their temper, their aggression. So I would much rather focus on the consequences than on the inputs and not try to define binge drinking. I don’t particularly like the phrase.”

On drink specials:

“We’re going to support the ALRC (Alcohol License Review Committee) recommendations, especially those involving limitations on drink specials. We also support their recommendations that licensed establishments have more activities that involve things other than just drinking – in other words, live music, dancing, games of various sorts, food being served along with alcohol and so on. We’re going to continue to support keg registration and to increase the number of alternative events that we sponsor on campus.”

On parental notification

“We may reconsider the parental notification issue. We’ve always taken a position on this campus that that’s not a good idea, that students are adults, we shouldn’t have to be notifying parents, and we worry that the threat of doing that might make students less willing to report when a friends in trouble because they think that’s just going to get them in trouble with their parents. We’re going to convene a group to study this issue – and the group will include students.”