BEFORE THE 1960s, colleges had no qualms about supervising student behavior. Institutions of higher learning routinely stood in loco parentis, enforcing strict codes of behavior on their students. After all, one of the purposes of a college education was to take high school students and turn them into civilized adults.
Campus codes sought to achieve that aim by requiring students to behave with decorum in and out of the classroom. That meant proper dress, no sex, no drugs and no drinking to excess — sometimes, no drinking at all. Young women who lived on campus — and almost all of them did — were expected to keep curfew, wear modest dresses and blouses and never, ever smoke in public.
Of course, in the years before the old codes fell apart under the assault of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll during the ’60s, most students already thought of the rules as antiques — relics of the Victorian era. The students did what they needed to do to humor the dean of men or the dean of women, but away from a dean’s watchful gaze, they pretty much made their own rules. But the rules were still there, waiting to trip up any student who went too far and got caught.
But after the ’60s, colleges got out of the parenting business. Students were assumed to be capable of making rational decisions about their own lives. Barring serious brushes with the law, the schools left the students alone, except in the classroom.
How is that working out?
There have been some problems, as the University of Kansas found out this year when two students died within two months in drinking incidents. The deaths were tragedies for the students’ families and they frightened the parents of other students. Those parents began to wonder just how risky campus life was for their children.
Early this month, KU decided that it was time for the regulatory pendulum to begin swinging back the other way. A news release laid out the plan:
The University of Kansas will implement a parental-notification program for alcohol and drug violations by students under 21 years of age, as well as several other initiatives aimed at educating students about the dangers of abusing alcohol and drugs. Among the changes will be a medical amnesty policy to encourage students to seek help for friends who are having alcohol-related emergencies.
The changes, designed to discourage underage and irresponsible drinking, are effective immediately ... . Additional steps are under consideration for implementation before fall classes start.
Some things about the program are not yet clear. Will university authorities work in concert with off-campus law enforcement to identify students arrested for alcohol violations? If the school is going to rely only on the reports of its security officers, a lot of incidents could go unnoticed.
But the idea of the program is a good one. Although it does not have the campus acting in loco parentis, it does place the school in the position of working with parents — and other students — to protect students and it addresses a problem that is much more dangerous than lapses of decorum or juvenile rowdiness.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor