Joe’s Dartblog has some very interesting statistics posted about alcohol and drug infractions across the Ivy League. We don’t know where on Earth these stats came from, but we’re going to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. And so we can finally answer the perennial question: do Dartmouth students really party harder? Or is the Dartmouth administration just better at prosecuting their draconian and never-ending War on Fun?

Between 2004 and 2006, Dartmouth students were about fifteen times more likely to get caught with alcohol than their peers at Penn. With an average of 52 infractions per thousand students, the average Dartmouth beer-guzzler has an over 5% chance of getting written up in a given year.  Dartmouth students were also two and a half times more likely to get an alcohol infraction than those who attended the school with the second highest infraction rate -  Cornell.

Brown students were cited at a rate of 14.7 per 1,000, Harvard at 12.3, Yale at 8.8, Princeton at 4.4, and Columbia at 3.7.

Joe astutely recognizes two possible scenarios that might explain the numbers:

1. Dartmouth students drink radically more than the Ivy League average; or,

2. The Dartmouth administration is at war with its students and enforces the alcohol laws with incomparable harshness.”

After the jump: drug infractions by school.

When we look at the number of drug-related citations, though, conventional wisdom goes out the window. Dartmouth – not exactly the Ivy epicenter of shroomers and potheads (we’re looking at you, Brown) – also has the highest number of drug infractions, 6.0 per thousand students. Princeton and Cornell – not exactly drug havens – have the second and third highest number of drug infractions per thousand students, 3.4 and 3.2 respectively. Brown’s rate is just 2.2. The only explanation is that these numbers don’t match up with alcohol and drug use – instead, they correlate with alcohol and drug enforcement.

It looks like both Fun and the War on Fun began at Dartmouth. And watch out, Ivies: the War on Fun is spreading. So here’s a plea: why can’t we rail some lines, smoke some bowls, trip some shrooms, and guzzle our beer in peace?

You can download Dartblog’s excellent Excel file (look at that alliteration!) with the full stats here.