Despite Student Senate opposition, a recent policy change relaxes regulations on the circumstances in which Eastern can send letters to students’ parents about drug and alcohol violations.

Keith Kohanzo, director of Judicial Affairs, said the revised policy changes two elements of the previous policy: financial dependency and enrollment endangerment.

Under the previous policy students under 21 would be subject to a letter home about alcohol and drug violations only if their enrollment was in jeopardy and if they were financially dependent on their parents.

Now, students under 21 can have a letter sent home even if their parents don’t support them and even if they are not on the edge of expulsion.

But during discussion of a possible policy change last year, the senate passed a resolution recommending the university stop notifying parents altogether.

The resolution, passed in March 2001, said students over 18 years of age are legally adults and responsible for their own actions, so parents need not be notified of “indiscretions while in university housing.”

Speaker of the Senate Joe Robbins said Thursday there doesn’t seem to be room to compromise much further.

This past summer Robbins and Student Body President Hugh O’Hara had talks with Kohanzo and interim President Lou Hencken, to at least keep the notification from being given on the first offense, Robbins said.

And the current policy does not allow for a letter to be sent on the first offense unless that first offense jeopardizes the student’s enrollment.

However, Kohanzo said drug offenses usually cause parental notification on the first offense anyway, because those offenses tend to result in probation.

Judicial Affairs has been notifying students on their first offense about the second offense letter policy, but it has not publicized the policy change, Kohanzo said. Though it is listed in the housing handbook.

In the new policy’s first semester of existence, 11 letters were sent home, Kohanzo said.

The rationale behind the original policy is that parents paying for their children’s tuition deserve to know if that student’s enrollment is in jeopardy, Liz Schafer, Judicial Affairs adviser, said.

Kohanzo said the reason for changing the policy was to try and curb a rise in the number of alcohol-related violations.

There were 432 cases of underage possession of alcohol for the 2000 to 2001 school year, compared with 374 cases in the previous year, he said. Whether this new policy is an effective solution to that problem remains to be determined.

Kohanzo said 52 percent of the institutions that have adopted this new policy have reported that alcohol violations have been reduced.