I think one reason some colleges don’t enforce underage drinking laws is because they don’t want students to be afraid to get help for an underage person suffering from alcohol poisoning.
They could enforce rules on, say, public drunkenness, while still maintaining a safe harbor for students asking for help for other students with alcohol poisoning.
This actually ties in to what I mentioned earlier today (yesterday? whenever) that we’ve normativized risk-taking behavior among college students, even to the point that we perceive certain behaviors to be the norm when they actually aren’t. The majority of college students, for example, don’t ever binge-drink, but the general perception is that most of them do, because that’s the behavior that’s become normativized in people’s minds.
Relatedly, on some of the reasons colleges don’t (and, frighteningly often, can’t) do anything about alcohol consumption by their students, the Chronicle of Higher Education did an absolutely fascinating-plus-distressing series of articles about alcohol and college life last year. I’m not sure if it’s behind their paywall or not, but here’s hoping it isn’t: [The first article in the “River of Booze” series](http://chronicle.com/article/A-River-of-Booze/150221/).
Well that is very good to hear! Alcohol at college really has me scared for my son. 
I hate that I have to prepare him for something that is inherently dangerous and that kills a lot of students every year. I want to just tell him “don’t drink, period,” but instead I have to give him detailed information about the dangers of drinking, and how to do it relatively safely (which feels like condoning it, which I really don’t) so that if he does choose to drink, hopefully he will be ok.
I have no idea why all this drinking is tolerated at colleges. There are just so many horrible consequences that consistently arise from alcohol. I do think it is a huge part of the rape problem. I wonder what the rape statistics are like at dry colleges?
TV4caster, momwrath: re. David Brooks article… I thought it summarized some ideas being posted on all these threads, and I’m interested in the follow-up reaction the next few days. But let’s be clear about my motives. PC is not a dirty word to me. I really applaud the student activists, even if some of them are very young and still have much to learn. They are headed the right direction. imho.
http://flavorwire.com/521231/op-ed-pundits-take-on-young-activists-is-there-no-common-ground
apologies for the derailment, but felt a need to clarify.
eta: I could post a half dozen articles about the Laura Kipnis saga and each would tell a completely different story from a completely different perspective. It’s not so easy to find the truth. If such a thing even exists.
I haven’t read the Salon link yet but I’m not sure what “mansplainy” has to do with professors upset about students who are offended by anything that they haven’t been exposed to in their increasingly sanitized and sheltered upbringings? I actually believe some of that lack of street smarts and school of hard knocks is why students are having a tough time with their alcohol consumption and seemingly random sexual activitie…activities that are typically associated with “adults”. I hope it’s not Salon trying to say that only women are able to articulate the issues that professors face, but I’ll read the link later when I have time.
The Nation published a piece on the Kipnis saga here
http://www.thenation.com/blog/201585/laura-kipnis-melodrama#
One quote that summarizes the issue I have with some of the rhetoric here and elsewhere is this:
I am not in any way trivializing the real issue of campus sexual assault (and neither does Kipnis). But the above seems a valid concern. Women should be empowered to make their desires known.
As to the original Kipnis paper, if professors can’t bring up controversial topics without worrying about students complaining to the administration that no trigger warning was given, how can students be challenged to think beyond their own beliefs? The idea that her opinion piece was so triggering that it required censorship by the administration is pretty anti the open debate that should be a key component on every campus.
If you have something that counters this Alh, I am interested.
It is my understanding that most colleges have used something more like “clear and convincing,” which was one reason the DOJ letter pressures them to switch to preponderance for sexual assault cases.
@Hunt #1028: Colleges were all over the map—but many were using clear and convincing for sexual assault (and, in some cases, evidence of being a potential danger to others in other ways) but using preponderance of evidence for everything else.
Slightly off topic, but @momofthreeboys, do you have any evidence for the truth of the claim I bolded? In my nearly two decades of experience as college faculty, I haven’t seen any evidence of students being increasingly sheltered—if anything, it’s the opposite.
“Women should be empowered to make their desires known.”
Agreed. There’s a problem in how we’re raising young people if some cannot bring themselves to say “no” when they don’t want sex.
@Hanna, Stanford has decided the default punishment for a guilty finding of sexual assault is expulsion.
Do you agree or disagree with this?
Do you think the standard of guilt should be raised to clear and convincing?
https://notalone.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/provost_task_force_report.pdf
Let’s recall, please, what the base accusation was in the Laura Kipnis story: a philosophy professor was accused of raping a grad student and harassing an undergraduate. The issue was not that the grad student couldn’t say no, but that the professor raped her.
Kipnis thinks that professors should be allowed to sleep with their students.
Totally agree. This was where I went wrong as a teen, I didn’t really feel able to say no. This is really tricky territory for young people generally…Girls have to understand that they have the right to say no and boys have to understand that consent must be very clear and obvious, never iffy. But it gets a lot harder to sort all of that out when you are wasted drunk…We are expecting young people to navigate these very complicated issues of sexual equality, consent, respect, and romance in an environment that is drenched in alcohol. Many college students have only minimal experience with either sex or alcohol, so misuse and problems with both are to be expected. Why are we putting our kids in this situation?
Drunk sex is allowed. Having sex with somebody who can’t consent is not allowed. There is a difference.
https://adminguide.stanford.edu/chapter-1/subchapter-7/policy-1-7-3
It is interesting how different media outlets (and writers) respond to different parts of the story.
This, again, from the Nation article:
Of course there should prohibitions against faculty-student relationships. However, the goal of the protesters seemed to be to shut down any opinion that might be contrary to theirs - especially if it were sympathetic to the professor who in this case denies wrongdoing. The better reaction on a college campus would be to have an open debate about the issue. Why Kipnis feels one way and the students another.
Kipnis is a feminist. The Nation is a liberal publication. Some of the young women interviewed in Rolling Stone and elsewhere say that they don’t believe what happened to them was rape. Some think something “not right” happened but don’t want the man punished in a major way. Some young women want to get black-out drunk and choose to have sex without feeling violated.
Education is key. Changing the perception of sexy and male domination is necessary. Getting rid of predators key. But so is recognizing that interactions among teens and young 20s, especially who have been partying, are not that easy to parse.
What if both kids are totally drunk, both of them consent, and then one or both passes out unconscious during sex? What if the girl gives consent, but then blacks out and does not remember giving consent the next day? What about boys who don’t remember wanting sex with a particular girl? Are they victims of rape by that girl? I’m not trying to excuse anyone, but I’m just saying, this stuff can be very, very hard to sort out when both parties are wasted drunk.
Isn’t that what hearings are for?
It’s a bit frustrating to me when the reaction to the existence of grey areas isn’t “So that’s something that has to be looked at closely”, but rather “The whole system is broken, throw it out”.