On average, Colgate students scored 1400 on the SAT, their high school GPA was 3.72 on a 4.0 scale, and they graduated in the top one-fifth of their class. The numbers were a big factor in the fat envelope from Colgate that showed up in your mailbox around this time of year.
This year, seven Colgate students have earned high scores on another kind of test, the results of which were a BAC of 0.08, 0.1, 0.12, 0.19, 0.15, 0.2, and 0.15. "BAC," as you may know, stands for "Blood Alcohol Content," and the legal limit for driving is 0.08. What you may not know is that each of these BAC results led to a letter of dismissal from Colgate for the rest of the term or longer. The consequences of driving while intoxicated are still playing out in painful, damaging ways in these students' lives.
As the faculty members who serve on the Student Conduct Board, we're not interested in preaching to you about right and wrong: Colgate students are smart enough to know that driving while intoxicated is not only illegal but dangerous.
Nor are we interested in haranguing you about how you treat your body. While we don't condone binge drinking, we ourselves enjoy a drink or two (OK, sometimes three) with friends at the end of a long day. We're realistic enough to know that many of you do, too. We just want to remind you of the line between having a few drinks (as nearly everyone does) and having a few drinks then getting behind the wheel (as no one ought to). Crossing that line can ruin your whole life. Here's how:
First you get pulled over. It's the middle of the night, and you've been spotted speeding on campus. Driving without headlights. Forgetting a turn signal. Weaving in and out of your lane. Making an illegal right on red. Not wearing a seatbelt. Even parking at a funny angle.
The officer smells alcohol on your breath and invites you to step out of the car. She wonders whether you can hop up and down on one foot or track a flashlight beam with your eyes. She asks you to blow into a Breathalyzer. A result of 0.08 or higher will get you an appearance before the Student Conduct Board.
There, if you plead responsible for driving while intoxicated, or the Board finds you so, you will be suspended for the rest of the semester. That's the minimum penalty set forth in the Student Handbook (p. 113).
The message bears repeating: no matter how eloquently you plead your case, no matter how abjectly you apologize, no matter that you've been a model citizen up to this point, you will be suspended. You will not get credit for the classes in which you're enrolled. You or your parents will forfeit some or all of the semester's fees for tuition, room, and board.
That's just the minimum. Other penalties may include probation, a longer suspension, or even expulsion.
The financial cost of a DWI can run into the thousands for legal fines, attorney bills, and college fees. You may forfeit a semester's worth of financial aid. You may have to pay for summer school, foregoing any income you might have made from working. (Of course, these are just the costs associated with a straightforward DWI arrest. The bill for a drunken-driving accident can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.)
There are hidden costs of a DWI, too. Prospective employers or graduate admissions committees may ask you to explain any gap in your college career. Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Ever been placed on academic probation? Suspended or expelled? You don't need us to tell you what happens to people who answer "yes" to any of the above.
More facts about this year's DWIs, as provided by Corey Landstrom in the dean's office:
* The number of students arrested as of the end of February was more than triple the number arrested in all of 2006-07: seven as opposed to two.
* Five of the seven students caught this year were stopped between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
* Four were men, three women.
* One was a first-year, two were sophomores, two juniors, and two seniors.
* At least three were giving a lift to a friend.
Seven people who've had time to consider how their lives would be different if only they'd walked or ridden the Cruiser. If only they'd switched off their cell phone, so no one would importune them for a ride.
Like you, those of us on Conduct Board are smart enough to be at Colgate, human enough to have done a handful of things in the course of our lives that we'd rather not have to tell our mothers about.
You've probably seen us around campus or taken classes with us. If you were to meet us under normal circumstances, you might even find that we have things in common. What we're trying to avoid, by writing this letter, is meeting you under not-so-normal circumstances, in a particular classroom on the second floor of McGregory Hall. If that happens, the full Conduct Board - which includes students and administrators as well as professors - will be seated in a phalanx, wearing somber expressions. You'll probably be shaky and ashen-faced. That's how people tend to look when they're reeling from what may be the biggest mistake of their life. Later, when the hearing is over, all of us will walk out of the room feeling just awful.
