Living the College Life: Alcohol - What if I Get Busted for Alcohol in My Dorm?

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Despite all the freedoms college students have, and their right to do as they please in their dorm rooms, there are limits. Specifically, you can't host a beer bash in your room. And if you're under the legal age, you're not allowed to drink.

It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time, before most states raised the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s, when students could cheerfully get a beer with their dinner in the dining halls. And alcohol use in the dorms was virtually unmonitored. Those days, however, are long gone.

For reasons of student safety and legal obligations, schools have cracked down on underage drinking in dorms. Enforcement varies among different colleges, but if lots of people are shuffling in and out of a dorm room, the sounds of Jim Morrison and The Doors are blasting, and loud chants of "GO! GO! GO!" are rattling through the hallways, one can expect a firm knock on the door from the Resident Adviser.

When the door opens (it'll be too late to lower the music and pretend no one's home), her first words probably won't be, "Can I join in the fun?"

What usually follows is a not-so-subtle reminder that although you don't have to answer to your parents anymore, you do have to answer to your school's designated authority.

The good news is that getting written up by your R.A. is not as bad as getting busted by the cops. It won't result in a summons or a criminal record, of course. But colleges are mindful of the dangers of drinking"from rape to destruction of campus property to suicide. They want to prevent those things from happening. In the same capacity, they want to prove to parents that their college isn't a place where heavy drinking and its accompanying tragedies are tolerated.

Many schools take a "rehabilitative" approach to alcohol violations, with the goal of teaching students the dangers of alcohol abuse. Such students may be asked to write a report about their drinking, attend a seminar for policy violators, or possibly, pay a fine. At Western Kentucky University, Jessica Martin reports that students must write a letter home to their parents explaining the situation and attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Repeat violators may be dealt with more harshly. They may be kicked out of campus housing, or kicked out of school. And, of course, alcohol-related stunts like fooling with elevators or setting off a fire alarm typically result in immediate expulsion"your school won't give any student another opportunity to engage in such life-threatening high jinks.

As a student security aide at the University of Kansas, Cody Quintero has encountered plenty of students who were drinking when they weren't supposed to. The confrontations have the potential to get ugly, but those who are drinking should know they won't prevail, and fess up.

"The best thing to remember is to be cooperative," he suggests. "If you fight back or have an attitude with the R.A. or staff member who catches you, it will only make matters worse for you in the end."

Incident reports are always drawn up based on these events, and the R.A.s note all the surrounding details, including the students' attitudes. "If a complex director reads a report where the student was cooperative and didn't put up a fight, he or she is more likely to let the student off more easily than someone who was resisting the incident."