The University of Kentucky has a dry campus, but that doesn't mean it's students don't drink. From an outside perspective, particularly from parents, a dry campus may signal a safe school where their kid won't get blackout drunk, but in reality, a dry campus policy is much more dangerous.

1. The policy encourages drunk driving

A dry campus means the parties have to be in frat houses** and apartments off campus, which aren't as walkable as on-campus dorms and greek houses. This can lead to an increase in drunk driving. Luckily, very few people I know drive drunk, but even so, no one would have a reason to at all if they could easily walk to parties and walk home.

** Frat houses in this context meaning off-campus rented houses that are lived in by a few members of a particular fraternity and used for parties.

2. The areas surrounding the campus can be dangerous

Almost always, on campus is safer than off campus. This is especially true for colleges in urban areas. Lexington has a C- rating on Niche for safety.

For comparison of some other nearby college towns, Dayton has a C- rating, Knoxville also has a C-, Bowling Green has a C+ rating, so overall, not great. Dry policies push students off of the safety of the campus and into the cities at the most dangerous times of the night.

3. It allows the university to avoid responsibility

Anything off campus, the University removes itself from. A prime example of this at the University of Kentucky was last fall when an alleged serial rapist attacked a woman only a few blocks away from the campus boundaries, and no alert was sent out to the students about it, despite many students living near the area.

If people are drinking off campus, it's Lexington PD's problem, not UK's. If some kid gets's too sick drinking and gets injured, UK can just say "well it wasn't on campus and our campus is dry so it's not our problem."

The pro-dry campus argument

The statistics shown here argue that dry campuses are safer than wet ones, which may be true, but I'd argue that these statistics probably don't take into account crime among students in off-campus housing.

In UK's case, the majority of the students live off campus, so any crime that affects them in their homes would not affect the campus's crime rate, even though it definitely affects the student body. What I think dry campus policies do, is simply take all the danger and crime caused by the drinking and push it somewhere else. Even though it makes the campus safer, it doesn't make the students safer.