Underage Drinking

One TCU student walked into his dorm room in Milton Daniel Hall last year where his roommate was listening to music. Seconds later, he heard a knock on his door.

“I didn’t even know there was alcohol in my room,” he said. “All of a sudden my roommate turned off the music and all of a sudden just freaked out. “Even though they believed me that I wasn’t drinking, I was in the room and so it didn’t matter if I was drinking or not.”

The student, who asked to remain anonymous, received one of 293 liquor law violations handed out by the university in 2007.

Government data from 2002-2006, the most recent available for college campus crime statistics as mandated by the Clery Act, shows that TCU ranked second of all schools in the state of Texas in number of alcohol violations written on campus with 1,541, eclipsed only by the University of Texas at Austin with 1,886. TCU has an enrollment of about 7,500. Texas has more than 50,000.

But those in the Alcohol and Drug Education Center on campus say comparing violation numbers is like comparing apples and oranges.

“There’s so many things that go into reporting violations,” said Sparkle Greenhaw, director of the Alcohol and Drug Education Center on campus. “It’s more complicated than just looking at the numbers.”