The moral panic over U.S. undergraduate life features increasingly illiberal demands to restrict open debate, due process and voluntary association—and the first impulse of most college administrators is to capitulate. So raise a toast to Dartmouth College President Phil Hanlon for responding with pragmatism instead of politics.
For several years the New Hampshire school has been conscripted into the national debate about sex assault, binge drinking, hazing and various forms of “privilege.” Protestors claiming to be oppressed by their Ivy League education occupied Mr. Hanlon’s office for two days last year, while Rolling Stone magazine attempted to smear the college as it did the University of Virginia.
Mr. Hanlon answered this week with a student-life reform plan, and the media seem most impressed with his ban on hard liquor on Dartmouth property. They’ve forgotten the lesson of the 21st Amendment, which is that prohibition rarely succeeds. Students who obey the rules will somehow make do with beer or wine, though perhaps a young entrepreneur is being handed the opportunity to become the Jay Gatsby of Hanover.