For the past two weeks, I’ve had to attend the Residential Alcohol Educational Program. Last year, I got into a bit of trouble with a somewhat surly Resident Assistant who happened to live next door to me. This week, REAP requested I read and write a response to a letter written by Jeff Levy, who’s son was killed in a drunk driving accident. In the letter, Levy supports students who drink in moderation, yet also supports a strict crack down by campus officials on binge drinking. Seeing as I am no binge drinker, yet for some reason I am being punished by a system I see as failing, this is what I wrote in response to his letter:

As a current University of Massachusetts student and a person who feels I have been treated unjustly by the current drinking rules in place, I began reading your letter with a somewhat skeptical point of view. Despite the sorrow I feel for you and your son, I’m afraid I cannot agree with the solution you have suggested for preventing such incidents from happening.

I for one am a student with a high GPA and numerous extra-curricular activities. I am a responsible person and am quite often the designated driver for my friends when we want to go out and have a good time. Binge drinking is not something I often do, although I do drink.

So as you see, I am a part of that condoned majority you spoke of that does not binge drink. Many adults drink in moderation and that is not frowned upon at all. As a 20-year-old woman, I don’t see why it is that I should be condemned for actions which people who are but a year older than me are encouraged to do.

I hate to say it, but what happened to your son will happen to other people. It is an unfortunate inevitability. Yet the solution to this is not to try to control and restrict people in their actions, for when you do that, it only makes the restricted item more desirable.

Rather, we should educate our children. One of the foremost lessons my parents have always imparted up on me is that you never, ever get into a car with a drunken person. I’m sure you gave your son that lecture too. However, if he did not take it to heart, there’s really nothing else you could have done. Sometimes when we drink, we forgo our better judgment and that is one of the perils we all must be aware of. I say we try to educate our children, not to control them. Control only leads to backlash and resentment.

I, for one, am resentful of a system that supposedly tries to weed out those terrible binge drinkers. However, last year when my RA saw me with empty alcohol containers, there was no deliberating over the situation. I was a condemned woman, so to say. This was a situation, in which I was neither drunk nor disorderly, but rather I was sitting in a room with a few empty cans.

The second time trouble found me, I was totally sober, but a 21-year-old friend left my room, drunk, with a few bottles of tequila. I wasn’t aware he had brought those bottles into my room. Although I was sober and he was falling over drunk, somehow I am the one who now has to go to three classes that are three hours each and pay $100 to do so.

Now, I cannot do as much of my homework as I would like on those nights, because for some reason, which I cannot logically discern, I am stuck in a room with nine other people, all of us wondering where the justice is in this backward system. It is a system that is happier to pin the problem of binge drinking on scapegoats, rather than those that cause the actual problems.

I am responsible for my behavior, yet because of the lack of due process in the judicial system at this school, my individual case was not looked into or weighted in relation to the reality of just what had gone on those nights.

I pose a question to you, Mr. Levy, and to all the readers out there: What justice have I received for being a responsible drinker?

When you unfairly punish the innocent, they begin to question the reasons they had for being so good to begin with.

Were I a different person, maybe I would take to an alcohol problem so that I could feel justice was done, rather than having just been slighted by a system I have to, for some reason, adhered to. Within rules and laws lies a distinct paradox. If you punish the guilty, they may learn to reform. Likewise, if you punish the innocent, they may learn to rebel – if for no other reason than simply for justice’s sake.

Elizabeth Carter is a Collegian columnist.