So much for personal accountability.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard comments to the effect “I was soo drunk that I … (fill in the blank).” Well folks drunk or not you did what you did and we as a community need to decide if this is the behavior that will be accepted.

In my opinon the charator and mindset on this campus when it comes to alcohol and especially alcohol related behavior, on the part of students, administrators, staff, faculty, parents and alumns is more of alcohol as an excuse. Let’s all deal with the issue for what it is… behavior.

So where others say “A quick call to Public Safety would of ended it.” I point out that this simply moves the responsibility from where it truely rest. The person behaving out of acceptable norms. In this case however I would submit that as it appears that no other student stepped up to intervene and knowing how staff have by example time and time again experienced a lack of support in holding up a higher standard of behavior on the part of the student body, that this behavior is to be tollerated to one degree or another. In the same manner that perhaps faculty deal with late assignments or a lecture to a hungover audiance.

How often do CRA’s, FYC, Custodial Staff, Suite Mates & Dorm Mates simply accept a weekend bathroom filled with vomit, blood, feces in the sink because the toilets are out of order due to an alcohol related “mishap”? More often than we are willing or collectively able to admit I should expect. Check the figures on damages attributed to vadalism which although statistical inferences may not be sound, common sense will corralate the rise in damages with the amount of alcohol.

When I leave my post in dining in the wee hours of the morning following a party night I have learned that I may very well encounter feces or vomit in a stairwell on my way out of the building. Is this ok with me, no. But until we all hold each other accountable in the moment and not pass the buck on to the staff at hand or to Public Safety, I am educated enough to watch were I step on the weekends.

I for one would love to participate in an honest dialoge… provide we are talking about behaviors… my personal opinion is that if you want to drink fine… if you want to behave badly and blame your behavior on what you drank than I have no empathy or even sympathy for you or those who tollerate your behavior, and here I apply this not to just students but society and our community at Middlebury as a whole.

What an embarrassment.

That any employee should ever have to endure this kind of abusive treatment is unacceptable. There should be a zero-tolerance policy and I would hope that Public Safety and, if necessary, the Middlebury Police would be ready to help — and that employees in this type of situation would not hesitate to call them. I hope that since there were plenty of eyewitnesses who can identify the people involved they will face serious sanctions.

The fact that this many students were intoxicated and out of control by 6:30 p.m. is pathetic and scary. How wretched for anyone who had to deal with them.

I know we’re looking for the big ideas here on how to re-shape campus cultural views on alcohol, but I would begin with sending a strong message that anyone, sober or drunk, who abuses staff members, does not deserve the privilege of being a student at Middlebury.