Partying like it should be

Last week, I argued that the University's overbearing alcohol guidelines and monitoring for registered parties are creating an unacceptable safety gap between registered and un-registered parties.

This week, I would like to propose a solution to this problem: Quaker Bouncers.

Jeff Millman, a senior at Haverford College, came up with the brilliant insight that the best people to monitor student parties are students themselves. This idea became the cornerstone of Millman's not-for-profit party monitoring organization, known as "Quaker Bouncers." Its mission is to cut down on the amount of alcohol-related incidents on campus as well as decrease the damage done to the campus during parties.

They've done a great job of doing precisely that. Since Haverford instituted the Quaker Bouncers program in the spring of 2005, the number of alcohol-related incidents reported at Haverford, which had been on the rise in recent years, decreased from 27 to four in one semester.

"I'm very glad that they are there because they are our extra ears and eyes. As students, they get access to places that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for our alcohol monitors to get to," said Tom King, the director of security and safety at Haverford.

Small wonder, then, that the Quaker Bouncers have been so successful at reducing the frequency of incidents related to alcohol.

Their recipe for success is very simple -- so simple, in fact, that Penn could easily replicate it.

First, Millman recruits students who, like to party like he does and thus know how to recognize unsafe behavior or when someone's drank too much.

The recruits then go through extensive training with the head of security and the dean of student life at Haverford, as well as a seminar on how to spot signs of alcohol poisoning.

Furthermore, each Quaker Bouncer is given a radio transmitter with a direct link to Haverford Security, so that, in case of trouble, help can arrive on the spot in minutes.

"Their response time to emergencies is phenomenal," Millman said.

Best of all, the Quaker Bouncers are a free service to the students who request their help since the organization is funded by Haverford student activity funds.

As a result, Haverford students aren't afraid to call the Quaker Bouncers to help ensure a safe party environment. Why? Because, unlike Penn alcohol monitors, who come to parties clipboard-in-hand, ready to write-up fraternities and other host organizations for the smallest infraction, the Quaker Bouncers come to parties with only one goal in mind: ensuring a safe party atmosphere.

"The hosts know that we're not there to enforce rules, but to make sure that everyone's safe," Millman said, "and because of that, we are generally well-received by the hosts, who trust us and ask for our services."

Could you ever imagine a fraternity at Penn calling up Larry Moses and his legions from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs to ask them to come over and check out the unregistered party to make sure everyone is safe?

Of course not -- precisely because there is such an adversarial relationship between alcohol monitors at Penn and host organizations.

"At Haverford, we do not require students to register parties with us," King said.

Hence, there's no rift between safe and unsafe parties at Haverford. Through the Quaker Bouncers program, Haverford does its best to ensure that every party is a safe party, unlike Penn, which vouches for registered events but just flat out doesn't care about what happens at the unregistered parties.

The solution is thus obvious: The Penn Quakers need to get some Quaker Bouncers so that the rift between safe and unsafe parties can be bridged.

Penn has all the right ingredients for creating its own batch of Quaker Bouncers: a Student Activities Council willing to dole out money for worthy causes, entrepreneurial students who'd be willing to take up the initiative and put it on their resumes and plenty of party-goers who'd love to earn money while ensuring a safe environment for their peers.

The major obstacle, however, is that the University administration would have to embrace a realistic approach to alcohol policy: they'd have to learn to think of Penn students not as children but as responsible young adults who can be trusted to monitor their own parties using this system.

Right now, that's far from the status quo.

"There has to be a balance between alcohol rules, freedom and oversight," King said.

And the Quaker Bouncers provide that balance.

Let's hope then, for safety's sake, that OFSA and the Office of Alcohol Policy and Initiatives will someday be as forward-looking as Haverford's administrators.

Cezary Podkul is a junior philosophy major from Franklin Park, Ill. Return of the Salad appears on Tuesdays.

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