The NCAA is concerned for good reason. We live in an era where college-students-turned-bookies can make more than $42,000 a year serving fellow college students and where Division I athletic programs have been irreparably damaged by athletes throwing games or point shaving.
Amherst is considerably buffered from the gambling fever that Sports Illustrated, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Congress have documented. However, Amherst is not completely isolated from the world of gambling. Our campus as a whole did spend more than $12,000 this Saturday night at the Hunger Action Committee's (HAC) 33rd annual Casino! Night, of which gambling was a central part.
But Casino! should be recognized for what it is-a night of harmless fun with positive consequences. Sure, Casino! is an endorsement of gambling, but no more than TAP is an endorsement of drinking. And it is certainly not the College's place to protect students from potential vices.
In addition, Casino! is fundamentally different from pure betting. It is a night of low-stakes gambling specifically for charity; in essence there are no losers because all money "lost" by students goes to feed the hungry.
Attendees of Casino! rarely leave with large debts to pay off. And Casino! is more a night of general entertainment than it is of pure gambling, with many students bypassing the tables entirely, choosing to head straight to the dance floor.
Nonetheless it might benefit HAC to place more emphasis on the charity aspect of the event. Students unfamiliar with Casino! may not have known that all proceeds were in fact going to charity, since HAC's advertisement focused on drawing attendees rather than the event's charitable aspects. Perhaps HAC could provide a list of the specific charities (or at least the types of charities) to which the proceeds will go.
Overall Casino! is a harmless night of fun, eagerly anticipated by many students. Emphasizing the charities a little bit more certainly couldn't hurt, though.