A rendezvous with destiny – The Kingston Whig-Standard

The issue of extreme, or binge, drinking among young people is neither novel nor easily understood. Most Kingstonians -- students included -- tend to stand back and give the inebriated their due. "Kids will be kids," the old saw goes, and local residents certainly have seen these "kids" in action, too many times to recount here.

As a retired Queen's University professor, and as someone who has learned a great deal himself from youthful encounters with John Barleycorn, I began to pay closer attention the evening of Homecoming 2016, when a neighbouring house became the scene of bedlam. Yes, a step down from the notorious Aberdeen riots of 2007, but still necessitating several calls to security and the Kingston Police Force to quell what amounted to a small riot.

Given that William Street has become primarily a student-centred demographic -- with several family homes transitioning to student apartments in the past five years -- the "party" was merely one of many, part of the culture that gives Queen's its reputation as a hard-drinking school.

The culture that gives rise to behaviours that you would not write home to tell mom about is ubiquitous. It becomes problematic for homeowners primarily during Orientation Week, Homecoming and St. Patrick's Day. But uncontainable parties are liable to break out at any time, especially given the power of social media to tell the world that a revelry is underway at a given address. And, then, woe betide anyone who gets in the way.

This set of proposals is based on conclusions reached after my decision to do something constructive to ameliorate the problem. I determined to interview as many people as possible, people who may be described as stakeholders in a positive outcome. Many fellow citizens shook their head sadly, offering a variation of "good luck with that," and walking off to attend to simpler tasks.

But I persisted, believing the importance of getting all people involved, at whatever level, on the same page. There are many intelligent people who live in Kingston. Why should they not wish to contribute to a constructive program to cut down on drunken merriments, which do so much to antagonize residents, anger law enforcement officials, give headaches to mayors and principals, outrage the chiefs of emergency medicine at both Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu, and provide a nursery school for alcoholics?

I have described the etiology of "the party" elsewhere. Here, after many conversations with people who make policy and who think about these things, I offer suggestions to mitigate what is now an intolerable state of affairs.

1. The mayor of Kingston and the city council, as well as the principal of Queen's, must look at both short and long terms of any programs that will affect behaviours and social mores in place for more than a century. A good start would be twofold: first, to take a good look at housing policies that have allowed student density in residential to become nearly unmanageable. It is time for Queen's University to get into the housing market, to find ways and places, to build residences for non-first-year students. A good start might be to knock down all the houses that Queen's owns on Aberdeen between Earl and William and commission two comfortable residences for upperclassmen to be built by private developers. That location is perfect. Queen's should make those new residences affordable, and take an interest in them, as well as becoming engaged in affecting the larger Kingston urban environment. I find it ironic that Queen's boasts a Department of Urban Planning but resists, year after year, doing what it should to become part of the urban scene it inhabits.

2. In the short term, city council should seek to make enforceable existing bylaws dealing with noise, garbage, and what I deem "nuisance behaviour." Queen's students do not have a lawful right to drink outside their apartments and homes. I, for one, would like to see -- and this idea is both short- and long-term -- council passage of a general nuisance bylaw that has some teeth. On drinking days (Homecoming, St. Pat's, orientation), enforcers should be out in force.

3. At present, Queen's Security is useless to homeowners in immediate need. Queen's should become more proactive in terms of providing security for people who are "visited," especially at night, by its drinking crowd. It would seem, also, that repeat offences might be tagged by having the university consider all students to live up to its code of conduct, revisited in 2016. Violations of said code should have consequences. At present, those regulations seem laughable. Drunken misbehaviours and police attention go unchallenged. The problem now is that, aside from terrible hangovers and -- worst-case scenario, trips to emergency via ambulance -- there are currently no consequences, save the damage done by/to the students themselves. Again, might there, should there, be penalties? Given the undeniable impact of excessive alcohol use on individuals' physical and mental health, there is a strong argument to make for consequences, especially for repeat offenders. Letters home? Names published in the Whig-Standard? Academic penalty? We've done well with other objectionable wicked problems -- smoking and drunk driving come to mind. There is no reason why we cannot deal constructively with this one. We must realize, as one colleague put it, "shame is not a Puritan ethic. It is a strategy for fostering a sense of citizenship -- calling out the failure to take the views/feelings of others into consideration when using public spaces and resources."

4. Queen's has a ready bureaucracy, undermanned to be sure, but prepared to deal with the fallout left in many instances by extreme drinking. The Wellness Centre, the Chaplain's Office, the Office of the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Co-ordinator -- all of these and other venues are involved in the aftermath of alcohol and drug abuse at the university. And these centres are very busy. They might think about joining forces with Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Public Health to step up a needed educational program. They all need more support, especially when it comes to proactive prevention.

5. Any educational program that will succeed, however modestly, requires significant student support. The AMS and various faculty and activity organization need to do more to recognize the severity of the problem. They need to teach incoming students about the dangers of drinking and doing drugs. It's that simple. One thing I have learned in my 75 years is that the immortality that many students seem to assume in their years between high school and the real world is a mirage. Swimming with the crocodiles while one is "wasted" too often appears a challenge, a positive, a way of fitting in with the peers. I offer a different view -- one that emphasizes human mortality, and the chances that one takes when one drinks to excess.

6. Given the centrality of the health issue, and the need merely to survive a bad night with booze, I note that the Detox Centre is too busy for business on Homecoming, and consequently that the hospitals are overrun with company. This year it was 45 ambulances at KGH emergency, clogging the arteries of that venerable site. So, to keep the hospital functioning as it should at future Homecomings, I suggest creation of a MASH-like mobile unit (perhaps two of them), one stationed at Market Square, or at the intersection of Union and University, dedicated to bringing the moribund back to life. This way the hospital emergency room can go about its business as intended.

7. The university must recognize how social the practice of extreme drinking is in its meanings. Paradoxically, students gain a great deal in the realms of individual and group identity as they share their alcohol experiences -- both good and bad -- before, during and after being under the influence. Queen's needs to revisit its practices of orientation and Homecoming, and note how central the alcohol experience is to both events. The proposal here would lessen the social component of orientation by removing the second-year Gaels completely and turning orientation into the academic enterprise it should be. This might also remove the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" attitude toward drinking in the dorms, much of it underage. You have to cut the umbilical between frosh and alcohol, and this is the place to begin to do it.

I have been asked many times about my own past. I state here merely that I know and have experienced all of the highs and lows associated with alcohol. There are days and nights and weeks and months that I would like back -- primarily from my university years. I make it clear here, however, that I am not against drinking, per se. But I am very much in favour of moderation, in intake and in behaviour.

Geoff Smith is professor emeritus at Queen's University and a former op-ed columnist for the Whig-Standard.

The Kingston Whig-Standard 2017

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A rendezvous with destiny - The Kingston Whig-Standard