Coverage of drinking and the 18th Amendment at Dartmouth was never limited to students and administrators. Outsiders, alumni in particular, played a large role in both sustaining and complicating the conversation. As an alum himself, Hopkins often found his mail filled with inquiries from fellow graduates. Some wrote with concern, worried about the ongoing drinking culture at the College, while others expressed outright frustration at national Prohibition or at Hopkins’s handling of it. The divide was sharp and a number of alumni even threatened to withdraw financial support if the College appeared too permissive despite their peers quietly urging Hopkins not to interfere, insisting that student drinking was nothing new.

Alumni were not merely commentators though, they were also participants. At the Class of 1911 reunion, for instance, drinking was so excessive that reports of disorder made their way to Hopkins’s desk. Figures like George Liscomb, remembered by many as a heavy drinker, underscored the extent to which Dartmouth’s wider social network, not just its undergraduates, was entwined with alcohol consumption. Alumni correspondence, reunion excesses, and personal friendships all reveal just how difficult it was for Hopkins, or for the institution more broadly, to distance itself from alcohol’s presence on campus.

Parents, too, added pressure, often framing Dartmouth’s responsibilities in terms of protection and liability. Their questions about how the College policed drinking brought the faculty uncomfortably close to a policing role, with the implicit suggestion that Dartmouth might be held accountable for harm that befell students. Hopkins’s consistent stance that the College would not stand in the way of law was simple on paper but far less straightforward in practice, especially as students persisted in a culture of drinking that survived the legal ban, faculty oversight, and general scrutiny alike. Simply put, by the close of Prohibition, little had truly shifted and despite the two decades of legislation, surveillance, and letters of concern, alcohol remained a constant of campus life. Whether this was a deliberate choice or simply an acceptance of the inevitable remains an open question, but it highlights the blurred line between official policy and social reality at Dartmouth.