This past week, University President Frederick Lawrence released the ad hoc Committee on Alcohol and Drug Policy's report and recommendations. The committee, which was formed after the events that occurred on the night of the Pachanga dance in October 2010 by then-University President Jehuda Reinharz, was asked to "review current Brandeis University policy with respect to student use of alcohol and drugs."

We understand that Mr. Reinharz felt the need to address this issue, as it may have been important to the administration from a public relations perspective. That being said, the events that occurred on Oct. 23, 2010 reflect the actions of about 12 students, not the actions of the entire student body. As this board argued nearly a year ago, the administration cannot evaluate the actions of an extreme minority of students and view them as representative of the entire student body. Moreover, as we have previously noted, the release of the report was long overdue. While the recommendations were completed by the conclusion of the fall 2010 semester, the report was only released this past week.

More importantly, though, the recommendations made in the report are largely vague and unhelpful. The suggestion of extending the weekend hours of the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center and the Goldfarb Library, for example, is a welcome idea, but we fail to see how it would affect students' alcohol consumption.

The recommendations targeted toward graduate students at the University are most puzzling.

Because most graduate students are older than 21 and have had ample time to adjust to a college drinking culture, it's difficult to see why the committee felt the need to address them in this report.

Additionally, the only mention of Greek life in the report was to "consider the relationship of the currently unrecognized fraternities and sororities to the student body."

Since Greek life is a major source of off-campus alcohol consumption at Brandeis, the committee should have devoted time to better addressing this situation. If the administration truly intended to review issues with students drinking, they should have fully taken into consideration the effects of Greek life.

The ineffectiveness of most of the suggestions is disheartening, as the time and resources of many people went into forming this report. It seems irresponsible to have used the time of volunteers, professors, and outside experts for a report that did not have many substantive or meaningful recommendations.

Using an outside expert for a more extended period of time to look more in-depth into general student drinking habits would have been much more beneficial than a largely superficial report that only takes into account the actions of a small percentage of students.

The few useful suggestions in the report, particularly the ideas to "expand transportation to off-campus events to protect the safety of students returning to campus" and "explore the possibility of serving alcohol at large campus events in a way that models expectations for responsible use" are heavily outweighed by the impractical recommendations.

These useful suggestions would certainly benefit students. Moving forward, it is imperative that any committees the University forms will produce proposals that are more relevant and constructive.