Rules, Regulations, and Violations

To rein in campus drinking, President Hopkins issued a set of strict regulations to one of the biggest sources of drinking — Dartmouth's fraternities. In a letter sent to all the houses, he laid out the expectations:

1. If Dartmouth’s reputation was misrepresented to guests or the press, traditions like Winter Carnival could be abolished.
2. Any knowledge of liquor in a fraternity house would result in the loss of party privileges and, in serious cases, the loss of housing rights altogether.
3. The presence of intoxicated individuals, whether members or guests, would itself be taken as proof of liquor on the premises.

Hopkins explained that these rules were prompted by "positive information" about liquor ordered and stored for delivery to the houses and concern for the coming festival weekend. On paper, this seemed like a hardline stance where even one drunk guest could trigger punishment for everyone present. 

Like in many instances however, enforcement was more complicated. The era saw a combination of dramatic scandals and quiet evasions. The fatal 1920 shooting of Joseph Maroney by Albert Meads for instance, became a national embarassment over a bootlegging dispute. Meads’s father blamed Dartmouth’s unchecked drinking culture while Hopkins deflected blame, instead suggesting that the College’s only mistake had been allowing Meads to escape social stigma for a shooting years earlier. Meanwhile, the proximity to Canadian smuggling routes and Vermont bootlegging hubs ensured a steady supply of alcohol to the fraternities and social clubs that continued to drink, often brazenly.

With seemingly no other choice, Hopkins eventually authorized a form of secret policing that provided regular reports filtering back to his office. Yet curiously, few individual students appear in the surviving records and little offical documentation of any arrests or seizures exist. Aside from certain higher-profile exceptions like Theodor Geisel (later Dr. Seuss), the archival trail of discipline is thin with entire organizations bearing the brunt of enforcement.

Some cases that stand out in the record include an incident in 1925 when Hopkins informed the Round Robin society that it was barred from using campus facilities after “persistent rumors” accused the group of acting as a bootlegging hub for visitors. A year earlier, he closed the Alpha Delta fraternity after persistent violations of College policy that needed “far less evidence” against them than against other fraternities, a suggestion that organizations were known to drink but that only truly abundant bootlegging would trigger action. 

These examples reveal a pattern: while most students escaped serious consequences, organizations deemed especially visible or egregious could face some level of penalties. Hopkins’s selective approach suggests that enforcement was as much about protecting Dartmouth’s public image as it was about curbing alcohol itself. In some ways, his logic feels familiar; drinking was tolerated until it crossed a line and only then did the institution step in. Some things, it seems, never change.