Ski and Ride Wiped Out

Lyndon State's Ski and Ride  season is frozen before the first inch of snow has fallen.

Ski and Ride violated school and club policy by allowing alcoholic beverages to be consumed by attendees at their preseason rail jam event, which occurred on Saturday, October 22.

The vote passed 29 to nine to apply the sanctions the Student Government Association Executive Board proposed.  The sanctions include: loss of voting rights within the SGA, loss of rights to hold events, cancelation of right to purchase or distribute merchandise, and their budget will be frozen. These sanctions are to be active for 15 school weeks, and will discontinue on March 21.

"The goal of these sanctions was never to destroy Ski and Ride. That is not our goal. Our goal was to make sure that these policies, which are United States law, are followed," said SGA President Nick Russo. "I hope that other clubs will also see this as a reminder that they are going to be held to higher standards as well."

The members of this group have the right to continue to ski and snowboard at Burke Mountain and otherwise on their own time, but this vote was to approve or deny the sanctions. Therefore, there was no opportunity to revise the punishment for these actions.

"We talked about balancing the sanctions between being too severe so that it cripples the club, to being enough to where it gives them incentive to change their ways and also to come back as a strong club in the spring time," said Russo.

After 15 weeks, Lyndon Ski and Ride will need to go back through the student government process to be re-issued into the SGA system. The money that was made by LSC Ski and Ride will go back into the general SGA budget. Ski and Ride is the one of the largest clubs on campus, with 81 members, and brings in the most revenue.

Charlie Forrest, a public safety officer on campus, witnessed around 20 to 25 cars parked on the newly seeded grass down near the new skate park. It is illegal to park in that area, so Forrest when down to check it out.

Upon arrival at the event, Forrest found 30 to 40 beer cans scattered around the area. Forrest then told Samuel Pierog, president of Ski and Ride, to take charge of the affair.

"I informed him that there were a few infractions, starting out with the vehicles," Forrest said. "I told him about the beer cans, and because he was in charge of the event, he needed to straighten the issues out. Then shortly after, probably within a half hour or forty-five minutes, the event stopped. I wasn't over there until shortly after four so it was starting to get dark, and the event just ended itself."

Pierog says that he took the necessary steps in the situation.  "I told everybody who was there to not drink alcohol, and if they were I asked them to leave. After I made that announcement, I didn't see any more consumption, everybody seemed to put away anything they had, and everybody who was involved left. So I felt like I did what I had to do, to let the school know because public safety was informed, and also that the people there stopped [drinking]."

Pierog also brought up the LSC Risk Management Plan, a 52 page long document that he created, which goes over specific details and rules within the club. Pierog quoted the section in the Risk Management Plan that relates to their drug and alcohol policy.

"All Lyndon State College Ski and Ride events, meetings, and activities are under the same drug and alcohol policy as the entire college. In the event of alcohol at the club event, public safety must be informed immediately and all persons involved in consumption will be asked to leave the event."

Pierog says that the Risk Management Plan is with him at all club events and that everybody in the club is aware of the rules. He also said, however, that there were over 100 attendees at this particular event, and many of them were not members of the club, therefore they may have not known the rules.

Sam Pierog and Ski and Ride Club SGA representative Weston Miller both said when they saw alcohol being consumed they asked those individuals to leave, and that they did so without a problem.

Pierog says, "I didn't contact public safety because the individuals I talked to before [public safety] showed up were pretty compliant on leaving and getting rid of whatever they had."

However, the determining factors of the sanctions passing were not based soley off this incident.

"This isn't just about the whole drinking thing; there have been many, many things that have been going on." Meghan Dolyak, Administrative Vice-President of the SGA said. "If they had done an event request on the website, we could have public safety there, we could have done all these things, but they didn't do that."

The group has had a problem with alcohol at their events before this incident and they were warned the first time not to let it happen again.

Weston Miller says,"I'm willing to accept the responsibility. We shouldn't have let it go as far as it did. As the executive board it's our responsibility to make sure, as far as club sponsored events, go according to plan and are following school regulation."

George Hacking, head of Public Safety, said, "Hopefully the people who were affected by this decision will see the error of their ways and change how they conduct business here on campus."