[81alum]

Is the answer really "more alcohol education"?  I highly doubt that.

Perhaps this is more a matter of semantics than I intended.  If by alcohol education you mean some online course about the perils of alcohol abuse, I would agree with you.  But the thrust of your post is that the culture of drinking, particularly in the first year, needs to change.  Yes!  That is precisely what I mean.  Education more broadly is about changing culture.  We know for a fact that there are cultures on this planet that treat alcohol much differently than the "US-university-first-year-away-from-home" culture does.  Education in a broad sense means changing the culture.  How do we do that?  How did we cut smoking among young people?  How did we produce generational change on attitudes toward LGBTQ people?  Stanford has some of the world's greatest experts on these and related subjects.  It would be nice to see the university tap the med school and the Psychology faculty to generate an innovative and effective program to shift the culture.  Stanford could be a leader. 

Whether this ban should be a part of shifting the culture, I really don't know.  I hope it was not cooked up by some deanlet or VP for student affairs, but was well considered by people who actually know something about what works in the field of substance abuse.

[81alum]

Is the answer really "more alcohol education"?  I highly doubt that.

Perhaps this is more a matter of semantics than I intended.  If by alcohol education you mean some online course about the perils of alcohol abuse, I would agree with you.  But the thrust of your post is that the culture of drinking, particularly in the first year, needs to change.  Yes!  That is precisely what I mean.  Education more broadly is about changing culture.  We know for a fact that there are cultures on this planet that treat alcohol much differently than the "US-university-first-year-away-from-home" culture does.  Education in a broad sense means changing the culture.  How do we do that?  How did we cut smoking among young people?  How did we produce generational change on attitudes toward LGBTQ people?  Stanford has some of the world's greatest experts on these and related subjects.  It would be nice to see the university tap the med school and the Psychology faculty to generate an innovative and effective program to shift the culture.  Stanford could be a leader. 

Whether this ban should be a part of shifting the culture, I really don't know.  I hope it was not cooked up by some deanlet or VP for student affairs, but was well considered by people who actually know something about what works in the field of substance abuse.