On Tuesday night, Stanford + Mental Health collaborated with ASSU to host a dinner and discussion regarding the University’s new alcohol policy with Anna Lembke, Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic and member of the Alcohol and Drug Subcommittee that helped inform the new alcohol policy. David Lim ’18 of Stanford + Mental Health and ASSU Executive Amanda Edelman ’17 co-moderated the discussion.

“We wanted to host this event because we found it a relevant issue to everyone on Stanford campus, whether you drink or not,” Lim said. “And we wanted to take the discussion to the next level and add a perspective that people don’t usually get to see, if that changes minds or changes the general conversation about alcohol.”

The committee

Along with several faculty members, students and public safety stakeholders, Lembke was invited to become a member of an ad hoc committee that met about once per quarter because of her experience treating patients with alcohol and drug use problems.

“Over the course of about three or four meetings we came to a general consensus — I would not say it was unanimous — that there needed to be more restriction and intervention around alcohol use on campus,” Lembke said. “I do not know how the views of our committee were communicated to anybody in the Stanford administration. I do not know if we had an impact on the final decision.”

“The final recommendation was that hard alcohol be banned from all freshman dorms, and that was based on the increase in emergency transports due to alcohol intoxication especially among freshmen,” she added.

Lembke said the committee, headed by director of the Office of Alcohol Policy and Education (OAPE) Ralph Castro, gave input and recommendations to Stanford administrators.

Lin asked at one point what other alternatives were considered.

“There were a lot of discussions back and forth,” Lembke said. “I think one of the recurring themes that came up in our committee was the issue of enforcement. I certainly felt strongly about that. There was some very interesting commentary by the students who were there, a couple of whom were RAs. The other thing that came up recurrently is the law in the State of California, that those under 21 should not be drinking alcohol. If that is California law, why is Stanford not enforcing the law? I was happy to give voice to my concern and my desire for more oversight on campus and, frankly, more enforcement of California State Law. “

Among the topics brought up during the committee’s discussions was Stanford’s traditional “open door policy.” Lembke said students on the committee talked anecdotally about how this policy really became an “open invitation policy” where students’ dorm rooms offered “full bars” stocked with any kind of alcohol students wanted.

Lim asked for Lembke’s opinion on various surveys of the student body that have been done since the institution of the new alcohol policy, some of which suggest students are not taking the policy seriously.

“Surveys are a notoriously bad way to measure these kinds of social phenomena,” Lembke said. “They have social desirability bias. To me, a better outcome measure is to look at emergency transports or the number of DUIs around campus involving students or the number who attempted suicides, which is often associated with these issues.”

Enforcement and reporting

According to Lembke, her ideal, responsible campus culture would have opportunities for get togethers, fun and sexual intimacy without alcohol. While acknowledging that some recreational use of drugs and alcohol can be healthy, she estimated that 10 to 15 percent of the student body eventually progress to misuse of such substances.

Following up on Lembke’s mentions of medical transports, Edelman asked about potential negative safety consequences resulting from students’ not reporting alcohol poisoning or even assault events for fear of punishment under the new policy. While Lembke acknowledged that this was a discussed concern, she didn’t think it would be an issue.

“Certainly any public policy with teeth is going to have unintended adverse consequences,” Lembke said. “I don’t think Stanford’s new alcohol policy has teeth, so I’m not sure that there will be any effect at all from it, except for sending a general message about concern for campus drinking.”

Later in the event Lembke stated that she did, however, hope for future steps that would say what is allowed, what is not allowed and what would happen to students who break the policy.

Sexual assault concerns

Toward the end of the discussion, Lim pursued possible motivations for the new policy linked to sexual assault prevention. Although Lembke said she was unable to speak to the intentions behind the policy, she does not find the issues to be unrelated.

“To me, there is a clear link between sexual assault, alcohol and drug use,” Lembke said. “Almost every Stanford student that we’ve had referred to our clinic who have experienced sexual assault […] has a concurrent alcohol or drug use problem. To me, it’s very obvious that if you are intoxicated, you are more vulnerable to be a victim of sexual assault and also to perpetrate sexual violence upon others. This is why I feel very strongly that we need a campus policy that is going to address campus sexual violence and also address the intertwined problem of campus drug use.”

Regardless of this position, Lembke continued that relation to sexual assault was explicitly not discussed in the committee on the new policy as it was “outside the scope” of such conversations.

Contact Caroline Kimmel at ckimmel ‘at’ stanford.edu.