Drinking culture poisons our Earlham community
By Dan Miller
As a first-year student approaching the end of his first year, and possibly his last year at Earlham, I can’t help but think about my experience here.
I think about the amazing classes I have had and the professors who have inspired me to achieve goals higher than my expectations. I think about the fun I have had outside of class, but inevitably I end up thinking about the reasons that I came to Earlham and the reasons that are driving me to leave.
While attending Westtown School, I was introduced to Quaker education, and I liked what I experienced. Therefore, while looking for colleges I was drawn to Earlham rather quickly.
I liked the focus on Quaker values, the small student body and all of the good things I heard about the community at Earlham. Community, that word, more than any other, is what influenced my final decision to come to Earlham. Ultimately, though, it is the same reason for my leaving Earlham.
People asked me why I wanted to attend such a small school in the middle of nowhere. Quickly I would retort with, well the community there is fantastic, students take the fact that they are isolated, and turn it into a boon. They rally together and strive to create a good experience at Earlham despite their location.
I truly believed this before I came to Earlham; everything I heard about Earlham pointed to a strong sense of community and fellowship. What I found was a community, but not the community I was expecting. Instead of working to improve the situation, students seemed hell bent on making it worse.
The community here, with the exception of possibly Bundy, is built around drinking. The drinking culture here is horrible. First of all, Earlham is a Quaker school that is supposed to foster respect. Earlham is a dry campus, period. Whether you agree with that or not, you made the choice to be a part of this community.
You chose Earlham, and you chose to follow the rules that Earlham has established. When one breaks this rule, one is disrespecting the institution, but more importantly one’s peers.
By partying on weekends, being loud and disruptive, by damaging the resident hall because of drunken shenanigans, students are doing their best to kill the community at Earlham. All of this drinking and disruptive behavior is disrespectful to the people who live on campus. By being loud and destructive, one is infringing upon another’s right to have a healthy and safe living environment.
This is not an issue of whether or not one believes Earlham should be a dry campus, this is a matter of respect. Respect for one’s community and school. By breaking the rules and transgressing upon the rights of others, students who party on the weekends are killing any chance of fostering a healthy community at Earlham.
It is about time that Earlham students took a good long look at their behavior and the effects that it has on the community here. I do not doubt that others will disagree with my opinion, but it is hard to argue with facts.
The fact of the matter is retention at Earlham is dropping, and I know for a fact that other students are just as distraught as I am, enough so to also leave Earlham. To continue to say that Earlham is a dry campus and has a good community, is blatant false advertising. The old campus adage that it is “pleasantly wet” only serves to rope in students who would otherwise go elsewhere if they knew the truth.
By ignoring this issue of drinking, breaking the rules and general disrespect, Earlham is forgetting its Quaker roots. There is that of God in every person, one needs not believe that to come to Earlham, but one must agree that whether or not there is that of God in each person, everyone has the right to be respected.
That is not the case at Earlham today, and for that reason, many others and I are seeking an education elsewhere. Earlham College, I encourage you to examine your behavior, I mean really examine it, is this really the kind of community you want to create?
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