MIT Begins Search for `Alcohol Czar' to Coordinate Policies

After nearly nine months, MIT not only remembers the Scott Krueger tragedy, but is taking actions to ensure that it does not happen again.

MIT President Charles M. Vest praised the Working Group on Dangerous Drinking report last Thursday and announced that he will implement one of the key recommendations by searching for an alcohol czar.

"I am starting immediately the process to find a qualified person to deal with alcohol-related issues at MIT," Vest said in a statement.

Vest formed the Working Group on Dangerous Drinking last November to examine "binge drinking" following the September death of 18 year-old Krueger, an MIT first-year, at an off-campus fraternity.

Along with recommending a head alcohol coordinator, the report's eight other recommendations included reducing "perceived barriers" to providing medical help to drunk students, improving student social life and annually surveying students on alcohol attitudes.

"[Alcohol programs] have always been there, but we're making [them] more prominent. It unfortunately takes a tragedy to get people to change, and there are [alcohol] problems whether it is at Harvard, MIT or Louisiana," said Ritu Gupta, an MIT junior who was one of four student representatives on the committee.

"The strong points of the recommended actions is that they are not quick fixes as Dean [of Students] Rosalind [H.] Williams said. There are no quick fixes to reducing the danger," Gupta said.

The report focused specifically on reducing binge drinking which it called "dangerous drinking," defined as the "episodic and intense use of alcohol."

Dr. Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health, author of a national study on drinking, has defined binge drinking as "five or more drinks in a row one or more times during a two-week period for men, and four or more drinks in a row one or more times during a two-week period for women."

Although Harvard has not suffered a similar tragedy, binge drinking remains a serious concern on the Harvard campus.

"The Wechsler data (as well as simple observation by Masters, Senior Tutors and others close to the college life here) certainly establish that drinking is a serious concern here," Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 said yesterday in an e-mail message.

As we have said many times this year, starting back in October, we are especially concerned about binge drinking, and drinking to such excess that students' safety and good judgment are impaired," he said.

Although Vest emphasized that drinking at MIT was less prevalent than at other campuses,--students binge drink at about half the national average of 44 percent--there is still a fatal potential.

Gupta termed the Scott Krueger tragedy as not only touching an emotional chord with most students, but also with Vest.

"There are always people who are indifferent but there's a lot of people who said, `This could have happened to me," Gupta said.

"President Vest has been very responsive. When any president has to tell parents that their child died it has to have an effect. It really, really hurt him; you could see that he really did feel pain."

Gupta went on to emphasize that the recommendations hinge on changing socially acceptable behavior.

"I think that [binge drinking] is going to happen until social norms change. Everybody at MIT is an adult, and can make their own decisions, but MIT is a community and hopefully people will learn to look out for each other as a community," Gupta said.

"People will realize you can have a good time and not get trashed. We all know people who go to parties just to get trashed," she said.

The 11-person alcohol committee was comprised of faculty members from the physics department to political science as well as students, and all members received anequal voice according to Gupta.

"There was a respect for everybody's opinion.We had a lot to learn from each other. The facultymembers often said, `If I was a student...[in anattempt to take the student perspective]," Guptasaid

"There was a respect for everybody's opinion.We had a lot to learn from each other. The facultymembers often said, `If I was a student...[in anattempt to take the student perspective]," Guptasaid