Since its establishment in 2012, Incheon Global Campus (IGC) is designated to be a Dry campus. Dry campus means students are not allowed to sell or drink alcohol on every location of the campus. With the purpose of enhancing mature drinking culture among students, IGC has been conducting a Dry campus campaign. However, there are many students opposing to this campaign.

Hyunmin Lee, a member of the IGC Foundation, emphasizes the importance of Dry campus policy in IGC: “One of the major goals of the IGC Foundation is to always keep this campus clean and neat. However, if students start to drink alcohol on campus, the garbage problems will arise and I’m sure that there will be students who disturb others late after being drunk.”

Even though the IGC Foundation has been executing the Dry campus campaign for its positive effects, students are questioning its necessity.

According to the University of Utah Asia Campus (UAC) freshman student, Sunghyun Kim, “Dry campus campaign is violating students’ freedom. IGC Foundation has blindly made the rule without explaining the specific reason. I think I can accept it only if there were many students who have actually caused problems after drinking alcohol on campus.”

Moreover, even though there is an official rule regarding the Dry campus in IGC, a number of students are not fully obeying the regulation.

Bae Sung Kim, a sophomore at State University of New York Korea (SUNY Korea) mentions: “I’ve seen many students who actually enjoy drinking on campus; however, I do not think it is a problem.”

He also added: “Except for places where students need to stay quite such as student library or dormitory, there is no problem with drinking alcohol in places made for students to communicate such as student lounge in each school and outside, in front of Umji Market.”

Compared to IGC, currently, the majority of universities in South Korea have a “Wet” campus policy, which means that students are allowed to drink while on campus.

Young Jin Moon, a sophomore student at Sungkyunkwan University, reveals his agreement towards the Wet campus policy enacted in his school: “I usually enjoy drinking on campus with my friends to relieve stress from continuous assignments and exams.”

He further shows his negative opinion upon Dry campus policy: “If alcohol is banned on campus, it is definitely restricting students’ freedom. They are already mature enough to control their drinking habits. Also, this useless policy makes students waste their time and money by going to the pub.”

IGC’s Dry campus campaign has been on-going for preventing four reasons: noise, damage to school facilities, increased risk of accidents, and a traffic violation. For these reasons, the Dry campus campaign aims to contribute to making a safer and more enjoyable school life for students, which is contrary to what IGC students think.