The Rights & Responsibilities of the Modern University: Who Assumes the Risks of College Life?

by Robert D. Bickel and Peter F. Lake

Book Overview

The past decades have seen an alarming increase in campus crime, alcohol abuse by college students, hazing and other risky student activities. There is a growing awareness of the need to make safer college campuses. While danger to students has been on the rise, the relationships between students and their universities has grown increasingly distant. The rise in danger and the loss of community on college campuses has been inadvertently facilitated...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0890896755
• ISBN13: 9780890896754
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Carolina Academic Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A must read for administrators, parents, and others.

Book Review By Joel C. Epstein Associate Director & Senior AttorneyHigher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention The Rights and Responsibilities of the Modern University: Who Assumes the Risks of College Life? By Robert D. Bickel and Peter F. Lake (Carolina Academic Press, 1999).There is an important new book out by Robert Bickel and Peter Lake, law professors at the Stetson University College of Law. The book, The Rights and Responsibilities of the Modern University: Who Assumes the Risks of College Life?, considers the evolving legal nature of the American university in the final decade of the 20th Century.In the book, based on a detailed analysis of legal decisions from dozens of tort cases involving colleges and universities, Professors Bickel and Lake describe the emerging judicial view of "university as facilitator," where higher education officials help students navigate their way toward full independence and individual responsibility. The doctrine of in loco parentis is dead, but the alternative of being a passive bystander as students die or do themselves and others serious harm through unchecked [and often illegal] behavior is equally untenable. Bickel and Lakes' work describes the evolution of the university/student relationship in a style that is scholarly yet easily understood by lay readers.Thanks to their thoughtful law review articles over the years in the Journal of College and University Law, Bickel and Lake are already household names among college and university attorneys. With this compelling book their names and work are sure to become just as well known among non-lawyer college presidents, deans, directors of student health services, parents, and others professionally or personally interested in the way the courts have tended to treat institutions of higher education in cases involving tortious and sometimes criminal behavior. The authors' lively writing style and useful case illustrations have made accessible what through no fault of the subject has too often been seen as material fit only for lawyers.In particular, Bickel and Lake are to be credited for taking on the all too common misperception that college student drinking is uncontrollable. Their strategy: address the problems of alcohol danger and disorder directly; anticipate displacement to the surrounding community following a campus clamp down on underage and problem drinking and work with the community to minimize the effects. To quote Bickel and Lake, "Strict community enforcement of underage drinking standards, with college involvement, can facilitate reducing the problem. And, the college is in the position to assess and discipline its problem drinkers, even those who drink off campus." At the same time however, the university should avoid dictating policy or restrictions to students. "Students," explain the authors, "will need to be involved in solutions to alcohol risks and in di