GRAVER: Tailgate
Village
Gravely Mistaken
Monday, September 24, 2012
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I wonder what would happen if someone
unfamiliar with American football were asked to speculate on what a “Student Tailgate Village Disneyland . Or even that weird
Swedish toy room at Ikea where kids can frolic while their parents shop.
Alas, it is an oddly conceived drinking pen
for Yale undergraduates. Come Saturday, many of us will encounter the latest in
a set of new alcohol-related reforms: the Student Tailgate
Village
The Village — intended to provide a safer
environment for students to tailgate — is a step in the wrong direction, for
football games as well as for Yale’s larger social culture.
Now, some of the new tailgate rules are
productive and necessary, such as the ban on vehicles. However, the
drinking-related changes — the most important from a student’s perspective —
could usher in a range of larger and assuredly dangerous problems.
The Village’s strict 21-to-drink enforcement
(which exists, truly, nowhere else in New
Haven
To be sure, students of all ages will be
drinking Saturday morning. If we are being honest with ourselves, with the
state of Yale’s football team over the last few generations, the tailgate — in
a Village or elsewhere — is in fact much more of a tradition than the game
itself. Unless Yale Police (or whoever is at the gate of the Village) is
willing to accept that — out of sheer coincidence — there are a ton of kids
from Delaware, Pennsylvania, Texas and Rhode Island who just happen to be
visiting a friend that morning and do not have a Yale ID also saying they’re
21, most of us will not receive a wristband.
So, with tailgates out of the question, how
will this drinking happen? If we follow the rationale that led to the creation
of the Village, one would think that students will just choose to forgo this
choice or, at worst, craftily sneak a beer or two into the tailgate. Any
administrator with the smallest insight into Yale student ingenuity, though,
has good reason to be skeptical that this will actually happen. Instead, it
seems much more likely that students will be heavily drinking in their suites
in the early morning and chugging Jim Beam in Coke bottles on the ride over.
Yale administrators should not look to the
Village — with all its features and activities — as the way to redefine
tailgate culture. The most substantial change the Village brings is the addition
of a vibrant pre-tailgate necessity, whose drinking practices — heavy, to last
the tailgate, and quick, to compensate for its shortened schedule — will be
exactly the antithesis of what Yale has striven to foster.
As a larger issue, the Village fits into a
series of administrative changes that amount to a confusing shift in a
previously pretty good overall stance on undergraduate drinking.
On one level, there is actually a lot to a
name. I have felt ridiculous just having to write “Tailgate Village
On another level, the Village is just
another mixed signal to undergraduates on how Yale looks at drinking. At times,
the University is (to its immense credit) quite progressive, allowing social
life to exist responsibly without the cumbersome reach of resident advisors or
overzealous campus police. But there is a growing trend of selective severity
in disciplining the same behavior in different forums.
There is a lack of clarity on how Yale
treats drinking, and this spit-and-glue method is creating the very
circumstances that lead certain student behavior — the same behavior the
University is most concerned about — to happen at a greater frequency. Despite
its cheery veneer, this is the real nature of the Student Tailgate
Village
Harry Graver is a junior in Davenport College
Comments
JackJ
10 hours, 32 minutes ago
Whatever happened to individual
responsibility? Why must the University have a complex policy on something that
is, in truth, a matter of personal will power? If students aren't able to
control themselves to the point of not becoming intoxicated by mid-morning or
engaging in underage drinking then why are they at Yale? As a junior it is
doubtful Mr Graver is yet 21 so the subtext of his complaint is that he is not
allowed to drink alcohol during a tailgate party at the stadium while he may
imbibe at another venue. That he would blame the University for underage
drinking displays an immaturity one can only point to in explaining why such
strictures exist. BTW Mr. Graver the expression is "spit and baling
wire" --"spit and glue" makes little sense. Had you said
"spit for glue" you would have been in the ball park.
theantiyale
8 hours, 11 minutes ago
Here is a civilization which sells legally
on almost every street corner, a liquid, which, when over-imbibed, kills self
and others.
We are terribly confused.
PK
PS
I confess, I was not a tea-totaler myself. I
drank for 19 years and stopped 30 years ago.
My
father's mother was killed by a drunk driver; my cousin's 16-year-old son was
killed by a drunk driver. My 37-year-old housemate (a mother of four) was
killed by a drunk driver, 19, himself killed. http://irenemother.blogspot.com/
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Reply ↵
jamesdakrn
7 hours, 11 minutes ago
And yet a substance which has yet to kill
someone is illegal.
Yalemush
3 hours, 32 minutes ago
Mr graver's age or level of maturity is not
the point. The point is that students (21+ and under 21) are going to resort to
other means in order to drink to a point they feel is sufficient. That means
theyre going to pregame in dorms, on the bus, or wherever that is not the Tailgate Village
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Reply ↵
theantiyale
2 hours, 27 minutes ago
The Eighteenth Amendment
The Volstead Act
The Twenty-first Amendment
WHAT CAN WE INFER FROM THIS TRIPTYCH?
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Reply ↵
observer
1 hour, 29 minutes ago
With all due respect, I think this whole
enterprise has less to do with tender concern for the well-being of students
prone to drink than it does with the legal liability of the Yale corporation.
If underagers get drunk on University property at Yale-provided mosh pits at
the stadium, (or have a fatal accident driving a truckload of kegs to the
scene,) then the University is open to lawsuits. If the kiddies get tanked up
earlier on their own, or smuggle in contraband coke bottles filled with Jim
Beam, the University - which warned them not ... NOT ... to engage in such
shocking behavior - is off the hook.
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