'This Must Stop': Principal Tells Parents Hosting Teen Drinking Parties

When Walt Whitman High School principal Alan Goodwin heard that Bethesda parents hosted at least two teen drinking parties on Halloween weekend, he had to act.

He doesn’t buy the rationale that parents who allow underage youths to drink at home will be safer, that they’ll avoid drinking and driving.

Goodwin sent an email plea via the school’s listserv for parents begging them not to offer alcohol to underage drinkers. Parents are breaking the law, and face a $2,500 fine in such cases, he wrote.

Goodwin told The Washington Post he was disappointed in the party host parents. If he had known their name, he said, he would have called them to discuss the issue.

Instead he sent this email to the school’s parents:

“Parents, As we get close to another weekend, please do not host an underage drinking party as apparently some of you did last weekend. This must stop. The law says you can be fined a minimum of $2,500/underage drinker if the drinker(s) is at your residence and you are present. While the fine is steep, the stronger risk is that a teenager from your party will be injured or die either from excessive drinking or while in a car with a driver under the influence. Parents, find other ways to bond with your child. Please.”

Parent Deb Lang told the Post she approved of Goodwin’s effort to prevent a student death.

“I like not only the substance of the message, but the tone,” she said. “I liked the words he chose. I appreciate that our principal goes well beyond grades and scores. He cares about the character of his community.”

This summer the Thomas Wootton High School community in Rockville mourned two students killed in a crash after an underage drinking party. Alexander Murk, 18, of Potomac and Calvin Jia-Xing Li, 18, of Rockville died June 25 after their car hit a tree. Driver Samuel Joseph Ellis, 18, of North Potomac – the school’s quarterback – was seriously injured.