I read this morning an excerpt from Crispus Knight's book,“Three for Ship: A Swan Song to Dartmouth Beer Pong,” a memoirof how Knight got into Dartmouth College and then promptly drankhimself out of it. Washing out in this manner isn't unique toKnight; I saw people do it at my own alma mater, where a robustdrinking culture fueled by an even more robust fraternity system(there were 16 national fraternities for a male student body of noteven 1,000 students; 85% of whom went Greek). But in Knight'sarticle, he notes how the heavy drinking culture and the ritualsthat go with it are so deeply ingrained into the fraternity systemthere, and how the fraternity system is so deeply ingrained intothe Dartmouth experience, that a kid like him really had no chanceat a place like Dartmouth. His chances of failure were 100%. Hejust didn't know it yet.

Now, Knight was, by his own admission, a broken individualprimed to fail before he ever got to college. He takes fullresponsibility for his own downfall, and blames it not even alittle bit on his school, which surely speaks well for his sense ofpersonal accountability. Apparently, Knight's kryptonite was beerpong, and the particular variants at Dartmouth that fascinated himso much that he dedicated himself to them. He got so good at thegame that he became a temporary school legend. He also became adrunk with no college education, at least for a while. (Knightultimately did return to Dartmouth some years later, and he didearn a degree.)

I do not know of any colleges held responsible for theirstudents' failure to negotiate the sometimes treacherous task ofliving away from home for the first time, dealing withunprecedented academic requirements, and figuring out how tointegrate into the social scene without being swallowed whole byit. Personally, this is not an area where schools even should beheld legally liable (though in today's environment, I suppose it'sonly a matter of time until they are, if they have not beenalready).

But there is a substantial legal liability schools face fromstudents who injure or kill themselves or others, or who damageproperty, while under the influence of alcohol—whether they areunder the influence on school grounds, or under the influencethanks to libations procured through the school in some way, shapeor fashion. I cannot imagine a single college or university in theland that does not have a risk management plan in place for this.When I went to school, I got to see two of them up close andpersonal, though, and it showed that for every risk, there areplenty of ways to manage it.

The fraternity houses at my school were a wreck. Many werefalling apart and digusting, but the fraternities simply did nothave the funds to renovate them. So in came the school with anoffer too good to refuse: the school would pick up the tab forrebuilding the fraternity houses, and in return, the houses wouldbecome school housing, subject to school rules and regulations. Theschool was realistic enough to know what went on at fraternityhouses, so it crafted rules that were meant to reduce risk withoutencouraging the students to rebel against them. I remember twoclearly. First, all parties had to be confined to the basement,which had been retrofitted into party rooms, with drains on thefloor and such. Not a bad idea. Second, all houses were to hire a“house mother,” a woman to be approved by the school who would livein the house in a amall apartment. Her job was to make sure thehouse wasn't being destroyed and that the students were behaving.Third-party compliance auditing, essentially. This was also a goodidea. We soon came to dislike our house mother, an ex-prison guardwho owned an entire pack of annoying teacup poodles, but that'sless an indictment of the house mother concept than it is of ourown hiring practices.

These things worked out fairly well, because the threat ofuniversity disciplinary action did a lot to keep students in line,especially at houses known for savage hazing practices, or whereunusually out-of-hand shenanigans were known to arise. This is thekind of risk management I like: innovative, flexible,effective.

The other risk management strategy I saw was from my fraternityitself, which also had its national headquarters right in town.Having National in town was a blessing and a curse. When we wantedto carry out formal ceremonies, such as initiations, we could do itat National, which lent a sense of gravity to the situation.Whenever any chapter from out of town was there to visit Nationalheadquarters, they invariably stopped by our house to say hello,whether we wanted to entertain them or not.

National was also a watchdog. The fraternity had a strictno-hazing policy, as well as a formal “risk reduction” policy whichall chapter officers were expected to enforce. The year I wasPledge Marshall, I attended a risk reduction training seminar heldby National, and I got to learn all kinds of interesting things,like how the fraternity had started its own captive to cover itsliability insurance because fraternities had such a hard timefinding it. But I also got to know the risk reduction policy wellenough to know that there was no way on Earth that my fellowbrothers would follow it to the letter. No way. Zero. None. I couldnot imagine any brothers who would.

The trick, then, was to figure out how to get the spirit of thepolicy across without getting the brothers to reject it out ofhand. It was a lot like the school's own risk management challenge.On our part, the leadership of the chapter handled it on a personallevel, taking accountability and enforcing the rules under a “Iknow it sucks, but these are the rules” kind of attitude.Eventually, people came around for the most part, though to behonest, we still violated the risk reduction policy's rulesregarding alcohol on the premises. In fact, we violated it alot.

Some years after I graduated—even after the last freshmen I knewgraduated, I think—my chapter was caught in some kind of flagrantviolation, and National came right in and pulled the chapter'scharter down from the wall. That had happened once before, someyears before I attended school, and it was always seen as anespecially dark bit of history. I think that for all of theeye-rolling over the risk reduction policy, we all knew Nationalcould and would yank the charter if it felt the need, so we triedto conduct ourselves accordingly. That the chapter let it happen asecond time was a real disappointment, and it showed that any riskmanagement policy is only as good as the people carrying it out.Otherwise, it's just a binder sitting on somebody's shelf gatheringdust and helping nothing.

My own kids will be attending college before too much longer.I'd like to think that the schools they attend will have a decentenough sense of risk management to let the kids have their fun, butnot so much that the place becomes a cirrhosis factory. But muchmore importantly, I want to make sure that when they get there, mykids will have enough risk management awareness of their own tokeep from going over any cliffs. One of the big points of goingaway for college is teaching your kids that they have to look outfor themselves. You can provide a framework that might make thingssafer, but ultimately the decision to manage their risk is up tothem to make. I won't really know how my kids will do until theymatriculate, but until then, I'll be laying the groundwork.