A total of four alcohol transports occurred at Full Moon on the Quad (FMOTQ) on Monday night, a notable improvement from last year’s seven, according to Ralph Castro, director of the Office of Alcohol Policy and Education (OAPE). All four transports this year were upperclassmen.

“Last year there was only one freshman transport,” Castro said. “What we’re finding is that the event is a higher risk for upper class students than it is for the freshmen.”

Castro attributed this disparity to numerous factors including limited contact from the event’s organizers to upperclassmen, particularly those living on the Row.

“We do a lot of messaging for the freshmen and the Resident Assistants do a lot of prep work to prevent [freshmen] from pre-gaming,” Castro said. “Unfortunately, I think when we get to the realm of upper class students, the safety net isn’t as wide.”

He stated that messaging to Resident Assistants (RAs) and Resident Fellows (RFs) was fairly standard this year. OAPE encouraged dorm staff to hold conversations early in the year about alcohol use and pregaming, particularly with hard liquor.

Patti Hanlon-Baker, a Larkin Resident Fellow, cited these early conversations as one of the recent changes in alcohol-related discussion. She emphasized the importance of making the talks mandatory for freshmen.

“We scheduled [a mandatory talk] very early on with OAPE,” Hanlon-Baker said. “It wasn’t just about FMOTQ but also about alcohol in general. We [also]… gave them the typical things to pay attention to [at FMOTQ], everything from not kissing the tree to the reasons why you want to be there.”

Tiffany Kung ’13, an RA in Otero, said that alcohol was heavily discussed during staff training.

“A bunch of the freshmen RAs were nervous about having FMOTQ [during] the first week of school because we really wanted the freshmen feel comfortable about Stanford and understand how to drink,” she said.

Kung stated that in addition to the alcohol-related discussions with staff, Otero has also invited students from a variety of communities to discuss alcohol on campus.

“We had many more students come in and talk about alcohol from different scenes [including the Greek scene] at dorm meetings,” she said. “I think that’s more effective than having adults talk to them since they respect other students more.”

Both Castro and Hanlon-Baker discussed the importance of planning events earlier in the evening to provide students with alternative options to pre-gaming. Larkin, for example, held a pizza party in the lounge.

“We wanted the lounge to be a social space [for residents] with their peers,” Hanlon-Baker said.

This year, Cardinal Nights hosted a pre-FMOTQ event, which included a Chipotle “Burrito Bash,” and Stanford Concert Network, with assistance of the class of 2015, hosted a concert featuring “The M Machine.” Castro described the event as “well-attended,” adding that students went through “1000 burritos within 30 to 40 minutes.”

“We wanted to encourage freshmen to be safe and [attend] the Cardinal Nights burrito [bash] and we wanted people to get food in their stomachs so they wouldn’t be too intoxicated,” Kung said.

Castro described Cardinal Nights as only one of numerous factors that contributed to this year’s reduced number of alcohol transports.

“It’s hard to say what we attribute [the lower number of transports] to,” Castro said. “It was most likely a combination of things– better messaging, being able to do programming on the front end [and] more vigilance with students.”

Castro praised the Sophomore Class for FMOTQ’s success, describing the 80 sober monitors as “outstanding” and “very vigilant.”

“The student staff did a very good job [with] over 2000 students there,” Castro said. “To just have four that had issues out of 2000 is pretty good.  Obviously we would like to have zero [but] based on what we saw last year, we cut in half the number of alcohol issues from this year to last year.”

In “FMOTQ alcohol transports down from seven to four” (Oct. 2), The Daily incorrectly reported that Cardinal Nights sponsored a pre-event concert. The concert was actually sponsored by Stanford Concert Network with assistance from the classof 2015. The Daily regrets the error.