Alcohol policy under review at Concordia

Concordia has begun a review of the alcohol policy on campus, but one member of the committee says the plans go too far.
“It’s pretty terrifying,” said Elie Chivi, who sits on the review committee. “Some representatives from health services are putting forward some suggestions that will eventually turn our campus into a dry campus and they have actually clearly said in meetings that this is their ultimate goal.”
But Gabriella Szabo, a health educator with Concordia health services, who also sits on the committee, said a dry campus is out of the question.
“Defiantly not,” she said. “That happens sometimes in the United States, but that certainly isn’t something that’s on the table here.”
Szabo said the committee is still so new she couldn’t really talk about what the end result might be.
“It’s really interesting, the work we’re doing,” she said. “But it’s still so in the beginning fazes of brainstorming that I couldn’t even comment.”
The committee, run by the dean of student’s office, began reviewing the rules for student and faculty groups to serve alcohol at events. In October Chivi said the review was initiated partially in response to a gang-related shooting outside of student bar Reggie’s over the summer. However he said the new rules will not apply to Reggies.
According to Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota, the idea to review the alcohol policy has been around campus for a little while.
“They’re still meeting informally,” said Mota. “They are absolutely at the most preliminary discussion stage.”
She said the committee is still planning how the consultation process will take place.
But Chivi said other committee members have already proposed the first steps towards a dry campus.
“Some basic things they are starting with are that you can’t advertise for drink specials, that the dean of students office should limit how many [alcohol] permits it authorizes for student groups . . . that you can’t have several events at one time so students can’t go from one to the other and just drink,” he said. “As the sole student representative at that meeting I felt like I was the only person pushing for having more lenient rules set in place. Obviously its very important to have a campus that is responsible and not have students drinking from one event to another, but at the same time student groups shouldn’t have to go through more bureaucracy to hold their events.”
He said the advertising ban would apply to any event on or off campus that had the Concordia name in it, but would not apply to student bar Reggie’s.