Collegiate Times

Alcohol violations among student organizations have increased to 27 incidents to date this year, a number which university officials from the office of judicial affairs believes is high risk compared to previous years.

Francis Keene, director of judicial affairs, said that violations among organizations commonly occur when people do not realize how much alcohol they are consuming.

"The most concerning thing is that I don't feel student organizations as a whole understand the personal risk that goes on, especially with alcohol, not even just formal events, but even things that go on in apartments," Keene said. "There could be criminal actions, ramifications from a legal perspective."

Ed Spencer, associate vice president for student affairs said that organization leaders need to be concerned about these issues.

"If you are an officer here and your name is on the line, you need to realize the position you are in with university policies," he said. "27 is heavy, it is heavy. Even taking into account cases that were adjudicated (because of April 16)."

The Office of Judicial Affairs is notified in a few different ways when an organization violates university rules.

"There are some who walk into the office (and report an incident), we sometimes receive anonymous complaints, but most of the time it's a police-generated or RA-generated report," Keene said. "The organization affiliation is determined by what someone says, what someone is wearing, or what others who observed the behavior is affiliated on.

We have had students just walk in and hand us a complaint and sometimes citizens will send us complaints when events are held outside on other property, even away from our campus."

Recently Facebook has gotten some organizations in hot water.

"We don't spend our time routinely searching for things on Facebook," Keene said. "What happens is someone says, 'hey, you need to take a look at this page' and that's not different to us when someone says you need to see these photos that were taken, or a notice on an engineering billboard with a notice for a party - we have to be reactive to something that comes in. People forget that the Internet is a public forum. If you put things up publicly, I'm not going to ignore them if someone brings them to my attention. I think that students think we look for that, but we don't have that time to do that."

Spencer agreed and noted that students should be aware of how ubiquitous Facebook is, even if their profile is limited.

"When people restrict pages to friends, don't forget that friends don't always stay friends and friends don't always keep things to themselves," he said.

Facebook was used as a tool when the former Virginia Tech Snowboard Club was under investigation for an organizational violation. As a result, the club recently had its charter revoked and is under deferred suspension for two semesters.

Nina Eerry, junior industrial design major and former design chair and president elect of the club said that a police officer found the event on Facebook and used it to question people living on campus and investigate further about the event.

"Nowhere on the poster was there any indication that we advertised alcohol, the only thing we said was that there would be DD's," Eerry said.

Eerry did not think that the annual snowboard club party would cause any controversy in the first place because of the way things had been over the years. Many students are aware of the party, which has been popular over the years. This year, the party was held on February 22.

"We went about the party the same way we usually do," Eerry said. "We advertised the party, we weren't selling alcohol, we were selling wristbands and entertainment. We had a couple of bands and people had to pay to compete in Rail Jam (the snowboarding competition)."

Officers for the club did not foresee any problems, even when they were asked by the town to leave the house they rented for their annual event. Eerry said that they seemed to have no hard feelings.

One of the problems that might have contributed to the rising number is that some were not getting the message or did not know what the rules were, or that the rules were being ignored, Keene said.

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