Tufts students reprimanded for excessive drinking at Winter Bash at Copley Place hotel

By Todd Feathers, Globe Correspondent

In a scathing letter to the Tufts University community, Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman reprimanded students who were hospitalized, threw up, and urinated in the lobby of the Westin Copley Place Boston Hotel during the school’s annual Winter Bash.

In the letter, published today in the Tufts Daily, the school’s independent student newspaper, Reitman said 15 to 20 students were hospitalized during the event due to their dangerous levels of intoxication. He added that the university is considering changing the format of future events to prevent similar incidents.

Throughout the letter, Reitman said the blame should not fall only on the students who were hospitalized, but also on their friends who allowed them to over-drink and on other individuals who were rude to hotel staff.

“I am referring also to the myriad students who threw up all over the place and everyone who thought it was okay for the hotel staff to clean up the mess,” Reitman wrote. “And I’m referring to the male student and the female student who decided that urinating in the middle of the lobby was okay.”

He said that students and staff who plan future school events will seek to “address the evidently widespread belief that Winter Bash is a time to get outrageously drunk and go to a classy Boston hotel.”