Drink in peace

Just before 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 22, nearly two dozen police officers gathered on the Spruce Street sidewalk outside of University Pinball. A pair of squad cars with sirens flashing and at least two motorcycles waited in the street; several senior officers stood alongside. A crowd of students, noisy and drunk, milled around just a few yards east of the police phalanx, largely oblivious or indifferent to the police presence. As the clock struck two, the blue wall began to move down Spruce Street, forcing the revelers on the corner and those in fraternity houses along the 3900 block to go elsewhere. It was a scene that played out all over campus this weekend, and always in the same way. A party would break out. The police would arrive, assemble and break up the party with a huge show of force. Sometimes, they even brought motorcycles. All because Spring Fling weekend is one of those special occasions when the gap between what is best for you and me and what is best for Penn stands in sharpest relief. The University of Pennsylvania pays many people to ensure that the school's image remains bright and shiny and marketable. There are professors and administrators and janitors; coaches and fundraisers and needy students, too. And then there are police officers. Most of the time, the fact that Penn is more concerned about its image than your happiness doesn't really matter. The two goals are usually indistinguishable. Professors teach and janitors clean; real estate officials bring new stores to campus and the police keep you safe and everyone is happy. There are, of course, some well-known exceptions. Penn gives tenure for research, not teaching, because teaching is not glorious. Campus green spaces are revitalized at the end of the spring rather than the beginning of the fall because that's when the alumni arrive with their wallets. And on Spring Fling weekend, Penn's party-hearty, beer-loving student body becomes the enemy. Penn has two good reasons for wishing you wouldn't drink. First, it greatly increases your chances of dying. And when students die, applications for admission drop and alumni donations decrease. Second, for most of you, drinking is against the law. And Penn can't afford to be seen as anything but law-abiding, particularly if you die and your parents sue Penn for allowing you and alcohol to associate freely. The flip side, of course, is that Penn can cause the same problems by being too rigid. Drinking will happen; the question is just whether the environment will be regulated. Which brings us to the administration's ambiguous relationship with its students' favorite party. Penn is torn between protecting its image and keeping students safe and happy, and the results -- like the frequent lights-flashing-sirens-bleeping drive-bys -- are comic and counterproductive. So let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Penn felt like cleaning up its act. For one thing, it would make a lot of sense to announce the rules of the game in advance. Tell students that everyone needs to be home (or quiet) by 2 a.m., and give us your best attempt at an explanation. Let us know under what circumstances you'll send in the motorcycles before then. (In case it needs to be said, underage drinking is not a reason to break up a party. The notion that all laws need to be enforced equally is a farce. There are entire books -- funny books -- which list all the laws that no one bothers to enforce. And that doesn't even include the likes of jaywalking, which puts your average student in greater danger than a few Yuenglings.) Also, instead of kicking students off the streets, get rid of the cars. Block parties are a fact of urban life. Help students file the necessary paperwork to close down Sansom or Delancey or any other seldom-travelled alleyway for the evening. Instead of running three patrol cars up and down Sansom, put a single car across the mouth of Sansom at 39th, redirect traffic to Walnut Street and send the rest of the police force to protect the rest of the campus. The bottom line is this. Whenever Penn works up the courage to deal with drinking as a fact of normal life rather than a deviant activity, good things happen. Sure, the law says that's a dangerous game. But so is the game Penn is currently playing.

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