Thursday, October 25, 2001

TCU agencies bail out students
By Jaime Walker
Skiff Staff

It’s Friday night at TCU. Every residence hall is bursting at the seams with students ready to take on the town, or just kick back and drink a little. Every student is searching for ways to blur out the week. No parents. No limits. No rules (or at least none we care to follow) and no classes in the morning. The college experience is about pushing the envelope, testing ourselves and living on the edge.

No matter how well prepared we think we are for everything college has to offer, we are never quite ready for the freedom or the sensory overload. On the mundane end of the scale, we play our music too loudly or stay up way too late. Those students who walk the tightrope at the other end of the spectrum attempt dangerous stunts, drive too fast without wearing seat belts, often drink to excess, dabble in drugs or generally party into oblivion.

Thank goodness our campus has established a few safety nets for our adventurous natures — the TCU Police Department, the Office of Campus Life, and the Alcohol and Drug Education Center.

These agencies are in place for a number of reasons. They protect us from ourselves and from the price we would pay for our stupidity if we act irrationally outside the bounds of TCU. They exist to protect the university from the ridicule it might face if the community understood our alcohol problems, our overwhelming social ignorance or our propensity for disorderly, sometimes violent conduct. And most importantly, the officials in these offices exert just enough parental-like influence over our on-campus time here.

If it wasn’t for the fact the TCU Police are responsible for handling on-campus alcohol violations, the 223 people who were cited in 1999 and the 218 people who were cited in 2000 would have had to deal with the Fort Worth Police Department and maybe the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission.

Better to get a ticket and be ordered to perform community service than get booked in the city jail. No Friday night beverage extravaganza is worth a trip downtown.

That’s not to say students shouldn’t take the fact they are breaking the rules seriously. Underage drinking and providing alcohol to minors are both very serious offenses. We all know most college students drink. But if TCU students are going to get caught, it’s better to get caught at TCU. Getting caught doing something wrong on campus usually means you get a slap on the wrist, as opposed to having someone slap on some cuffs. If you’re going to push the limit a little too far, this is the place to make your mistakes.

Just having an Alcohol and Drug Education Center is proof enough that TCU officials understand we have a problem. Whether we deal well with the few hundred reported cases and the hundreds of unreported cases of alcohol and drug abuse adequately is another issue. If the “Just Say No” campaign didn’t work for us growing up, what amount of education is going to help us now, when we are even more convinced we’re invincible?

Regardless of whether their efforts are noticeably successful or not, the work these offices do is important. The Alcohol and Drug Education Center does valuable work to combat our negative and often reckless behavior. If their efforts make even a slight difference in one life, then it’s worth it.

I’m also glad that Campus Life officials helps students cope not only with drug and alcohol issues, but also with some of the hard-hitting problems students face — death of parents, depression, roommates with dangerous habits, personal illness and others.

Attending college can be more fun than you ever imagined. But from time to time our own enjoyment gets the best of us. Students should be thankful not just for the liberation college offers but for the protection TCU offers.

We often gripe about the police, the rules and the bubble. However, when it comes down to it, in those moments we’d rather forget and the ones we can’t remember anyway, we should be grateful for all three.

Jaime Walker is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Roswell, Ga.
She can be contacted at (j.l.walker@student.tcu.edu).