To Whom it May Concern:

As a first-year student, I am a resident of Olson Hall. I love Luther and would not consider leaving, which is why I feel I must express my feelings about current policies. I am outraged by the alcohol policies, the new “Quiet Policy” Olson just adopted and the floor-wide fines. I’m not going to talk about the absurdity of the cafeteria hours or the strange prices and exceptions of meal transfers in this letter because that would just be too long.

The current Alcohol Policy states that for a first offense, any student in a room found to contain any unopened alcohol containers by an R.A. or campus police can be written up and required to participate in five hours of community service. This is ridiculous. By adhering to this rule, if a student does not want to get in trouble, he/she cannot enter anyone else’s room.

Who is to say if someone is keeping alcohol in his or her fridge? Would that be the first thing you ask someone when entering a room to watch TV on a Saturday night? “Hi, thanks for having me, but I’m not going to hang out if there’s any alcohol in here, in case an R.A. decides to knock on the door because he heard ‘clanking of glass bottles.’” (Which are probably not even present — sound familiar, anyone?) A student who has not been drinking but is “caught” in a room with alcohol, even unopened, will have the incident recorded on his/her permanent record.

Another thing that frustrates me about this policy is the inability to clear your name. If you have not been drinking but are present in a room with alcohol, there is no policy allowing you to prove you have not been doing anything illegal, like taking a Breathalyzer.

This sheer ignorance of the rights of students makes me livid, and I do not see how so many students are complying with this policy. This makes it even harder to be comfortable in a room where you may not know the people or what they keep in their refrigerator. If you’re in a room with alcohol, you’re in trouble. Period. Even if you haven’t been drinking, have never sipped alcohol and would never consider doing so, it will be on your record and you will be required to pay the consequences for something you did not do.

There is so much left up to the interpretation of the R.A.s, which creates a whole new set of problems. I live on a very social floor in Olson, which I’m very happy about, though there are definitely times when it’s excessively loud and hard to fall asleep. However, I received an e-mail recently about a new policy in Olson: if I am told by any R.A. to be quiet, it will be documented. If it happens more than once in one week, I will be fined. How loud is too loud? When will I be documented? Are there a certain number of decibels my melodious voice should not rise above? I do know, for instance, that yelling in the halls at midnight is too loud.

And it’s nothing personal against my R.A.s. I can easily see someone having a bad night and feeling like everything’s too loud — but something of that degree, like people talking in the hallway and being told to go to a lounge, should not be documented. It’s so open for individual interpretation and in no way fair.

I guess the thing that makes me so livid about all this is that no one tells the prospective students. No one told me. No one mentioned floor-wide fines or being written up if you happen to enter a room that, as the R.A. follows you inside, gets busted for alcohol and you get that on your permanent record. What is stopping me from handing out fliers to prospective students about things they should know? “At Luther, if you’re an athlete, you won’t be able to eat meals in the cafeteria.” Or, “Watch out if your floor smells bad because at the end of the year, you could get fined.” I am outraged, and I feel that my fellow students — and hopefully faculty and staff — should join me in trying to change the current policies at Luther College that are absurd and unfair.

Kate Stebbins (‘11)