Facing protests, police officials in Hanover, N.H., say they will delay a plan to send undercover officers into parties at Dartmouth College in an effort to curb underage drinking, the Union Leader reports. The plan was criticized by Dartmouth students, faculty members, alumni, and administrators. ”The ball is thrown back to their court to orchestrate in some meaningful way some changes,” said Nicholas Giaccone, Hanover’s police chief. “This needs to start being evident in a fairly short time frame. We’re not going to wait very long.”
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6 Responses to For Now, Cops Won’t Infiltrate Dartmouth Parties
tridaddy - February 11, 2010 at 9:36 am
What’s the big deal. If the students weren’t doing something unlawful (let’s not discuss the merits of the law at this point), then there would be nothing to be concerned about. Everyone will be up in arms and ask what can we do when there is a fatality due to an underage student being drunk and driving. You can’t have it both ways. The students (and the administration) need to clean up their act or accept law enforcement doing it for them.
pambrown15 - February 12, 2010 at 8:13 am
As a Dartmouth graduate, I don’t think it’s appropriate to have undercover cops infiltrate frat parties… The entire social system of Dartmouth was developed when the drinking age was 18, and it’s virtually impossible to change… Over the last 20 years I’ve heard of about a million different attempts to curb underage drinking, but none of them ever work because there’s no replacement for the fraternity system in rural NH. Further, the College never finds alumni support for a change – it sounds silly, but we’ve all benefited from diverse and lifelong friendships that were developed over beer pong.
tisenhour - February 12, 2010 at 9:29 am
Wouldn’t a 50 year old undercover policeman look out of place at a party where underage drinking is going on? Or would the students be too blitzed to notice?
athibo - February 12, 2010 at 10:33 am
Sounds like J. Edgar Hoover is alive and well in northern N.H.
lsuagecon - February 12, 2010 at 12:08 pm
It seems silly to “drive” the students from the campus to out of town places and functions. The students are adults–let them make the chose. The college needs to educate the students about the cost to society and themselves of drunk driving. This is not the old “Soviet Union”. We don’t need to have undercover police at parties.
paulderb - February 13, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Absurd. Privilege of college students to defy the law of the land is a tradition, nothing more. It’s just a reflection of a general ideology shared by private clubs that select members with extreme prejudice: for as long as the money lasts, so does the privilege. This is not far removed from the privilege of college professors to defy the laws of economics by producing little and consuming much. University life may be the next “too big to fail” story we read.