<p>or find ways to hide it.</p>
<p>I agree with interesteddad - make the rates public.</p>
<p>Columbia_student, with all due respect, even though I'm sure it's true, that just does not sound like something a parent would say....</p>
<p>It may or may not surprise you but there is a party scene at St. Olaf. ;) It's at every school, you just have to find your niche.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is research looking at alcohol poisoning rates? Heavy drinking, as a number of posters have indicated, has been a part of college life for a long time. I attended UNC in the mid 70'a. The drinking age was 18 (beer and wine) and quite a bit of it was kegs or in bars. D attend a small, academically challenging (top15 USNWR) college and this year, there have been 16 kids hospitalized with alcohol poisoning! I don't remember anyone in my day getting sick enough to require hospitalization. I m interested in thoughts on the poisoning.</p>
<p>With Shrinkrap, I'm wondering about some comments in Columbia_student's post, namely, the point that without partying/drinking a student might "miss out on the college experience." Isn't the view that this is the "college experience" part of the problem? </p>
<p>I am always surprised when parents tell me that their kids are at a school where they "work hard, party hard." "Party hard" seems to mean "drink to excess," and, if so, why is this part of the ethos we'd encourage. The view that "this is college, this is what happens" seems a bit lame.</p>
<p>Publishing stats on drinking would certainly be an interesting idea! We don't accept admission statistics, tuition costs, etc., by "word of mouth," so why not frame some issues of student life in quantifiable terms?</p>
<p>hornet--I wonder the same thing. I think it may be that they do shots now. I really don't remember that "way back when."</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is research looking at alcohol poisoning rates? Heavy drinking, as a number of posters have indicated, has been a part of college life for a long time. I attended UNC in the mid 70's. The drinking age was 18 (beer and wine) and quite a bit of the drinking was keg parties or in bars. D attends a small, academically challenging (top15 USNWR) college and this year, there have been 16 kids hospitalized with alcohol poisoning! I don't remember anyone in my day getting sick enough to require hospitalization. I'm interested in thoughts on the poisoning. D has been puzzled by the drinking being so out of control that the students would be so self destructive in their poisoning. The poisoning seems be upperclassmen in addition to the inexperienced (with drinking) first year students.</p>
<p>Where are you going to get accurate, honest information for these statistics? I doubt anyone my son drinks with considers that they drink to excess or abuse alcohol. Remember the student poster on this forum from Cornell who died at UVA? He insisted that his conduct was perfectly reasonable.</p>
<p>Work hard/party hard is a reality, whether we like it or not. My son and his friends fall into this category, and I don't like it and I have made that clear. It all falls on deaf ears. I am quite concerned about the alcohol abuse by some of the females. InterestedDad tends to point at the males, but I have seen some very frightening behavior by girls at various colleges. I think there are possibly more signs of addictive behavior among these girls. This is true of high school drinkers, too.<br>
Has anyone read the book Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood? I am reading it right now. Here is a link to an article about it. Smashed</a> - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>I just took a health survey for my school, and for some questions there was no obvious choice for those who choose not to drink.</p>
<p>It's a little offensive to me that it's just a common assumption that all college students drink. It's false, and it makes me seem like an abnormality instead of a responsible, law-abiding adult.</p>
<p>No one is saying ALL college students drink. Of course that isn't the case. However, at MOST colleges there is a very large drinking population and an unfortunate number of students who binge drink and abuse alcohol multiple times a week.</p>
<p>I did not drink in college, plus I was in a frat, so there you go.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Friend's kid at Cornell dropped out after one year due the party scene. Is now attending Wheaton.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yet Cornell is the same school where my non-drinking daughter has had no difficulty finding friends with similar habits. I think it all depends on how lucky you are in the friends you make your first semester.</p>
<p>Of course, the rampant drinking on campus does have some impact on her. She lives in one dorm neighborhood; most of her friends live in another. When she visits them on a weekend evening, a male friend or a group of girls will walk her home. If they didn't, as a girl walking alone late at night, she would probably be hassled by drunks, who are everywhere.</p>
<p>Yes, the US News rankings DO drive behavior by college administrators. And one of those behaviors is to manipulate the statistics reported.
As it is, a number of schools out there hide their binge drinking rates by not participating in surveys. Others are more open in the hopes that it will draw attention to the problem and help with the solution. Let's not squash that. We need accurate information on this problem - not a system that drives colleges to manipulate (and hide) statistics on that problem.</p>
<p>The college where my S attends lists and catagorizes the on and off campus infractions by students by year.</p>
<p>I think a federal requirement to publish the surveys (and NOT the infractions, which are manipulated in every possible way) would help, as would using the surveys in USNWR rankings. Certainly, the binge drinking rate is a better measure of EDUCATIONAL quality than the ranking by deans who have never in their entire lives even set foot on the campuses they are supposed to be ranking. </p>
<p>But I'd couple that with a very simple question on the college application (and on the common application) - "Have you ever used a alcohol or drugs illegally? If so, please explain." Yes, many students would lie - and that's okay - they lie about the ECs and other stuff on their applications already. The colleges could decide to ignore the answer to the question entirely - and that's fine too. Just asking the question would send a clear message that they don't tolerate public displays of illegal behavior.</p>
<p>I'm not just worried about the ILLEGAL behavior! Many of these students are over 21 and are binge drinking and doing shots three nights or more a week.</p>
<p>I have a suspicion -- that I can't back up with data -- that colleges that proactively discourage drinking (successfully, not just pro forma) attract fewer applications than the work hard/party hard colleges. One sees it here all the time on College Confidential: students want to have fun, and are leery of schools that don't seem fun enough. And especially those spoiled, overprivileged, irresponsible full-paying students that every college except HYPS needs to balance the books.</p>
<p>So I'm not sure at all that suppressing campus drinking is a winning strategy for ambitious college presidents. The University of Chicago has as little drinking culture as I've seen at any elite college, and its application marketing is perpetually haunted by its "Where Fun Comes To Die" image. (Just to be clear, there is plenty of alcohol-fueled partying there, notwithstanding that all applicants know that there is less partying than at any of its peer institutions, and thus in part have self-selected based on that, or at least on willingness to tolerate that.) And I have heard of many non-drinking students eschewing substance-free dorms out of a fear that they will miss the fun. It's not as though colleges are unique -- all over the world, 18-22 year-olds choose intoxication at a pretty high rate.</p>
<p>Professionally, I deal with the results. Ain't pretty. (and, yes, I agree - the fact that it is illegal is irrelevant - out-of-control highway speeding can kill you, and making it illegal is only a way -- one of many -- to control it. But if it works, and the data suggests strongly that it does, it is worth extending to college admissions.)</p>
<p>Just publish the data, use it in rankings, and let the consumers decide. Yes, lots of folks attend certain schools because they WANT to drink heavily (they began in high school or, the data indicates, earlier), and so let's make it easier for them to make informed choices.</p>