<p>Maybe the solution is as simple as USNEWS publishing each college's binge drinking rates and including those rates in the overall ranking index. After all, it probably has more impact on the educational quality than the percentage of alumni contributions.</p>
<p>Let the market choose a prefered college environment. Drunks would have the accurate information they need to choose a "party school" as would those who put a priority on other types of college environments. Caveat emptor.</p>
<p>Lord knows, colleges will jump through hoops to "look good" in other ranking categories when there is marketplace exposure. A college unhappy with its ranking, either because they want to attract more drunks or fewer drunks, can take appropriate action to increase or decrease the drinking culture on its campus.</p>
<p>Being ranked as the number 1 "booze flows freely" school in Princeton Review appears to be the motivation for, at least, superficial actions at one liberal arts college in the last couple of years.</p>
<p>"Some have presented the argument that 'My friends and I all drank like fish in college, and we are now all professionals. Therefore, the drinking did us no harm.'"</p>
<p>It was never said that the drinking did us no harm. That wasn't the point that was being made. The point was that we did drink, certainly within the parameters of what is now considered binge drinking, but that no one made a big deal about it back then, school, parents, authorities, whatever.</p>
<p>The question was then posed as to what has changed since the mid-70s. The discussion then evolved substantially.</p>
<p>For the record, most of us are now infrequent or non-drinkers.</p>
<p>What has changed since the mid-70s? The entire culture around drinking.</p>
<p>Sure, there were always pockets of heavy drinkers, especially among frats, sports teams, even -- as I recall -- engineers. In that era, virtually all male. What I see now is much more-equal opportunity drunkenness. Rather than being isolated among self-selected groups, it permeates the whole campus culture and the notion of social life. Read the Harvard Crimson articles last year griping about the paucity of social life at Harvard compared to Yale and the bottom line is: Yale provides more on-campus alcohol. At the schools that don't provide it or turn a blind eye to it at campus events, kids get it themselves and "pre-game" in their rooms before going to the events.</p>
<p>I see this cultural shift in the way students talk about their drinking. It used to be embarrassing to puke and anyone who passed out provoked concern among friends. There are plenty of students out there -- and I'm not talking Chico State here -- who pass out or puke regularly. Who drink Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights just about every week and who brag about waking up the next morning not remembering how they made it to their beds, about passing out and peeing on themselves, about the number of spots on campus where they've puked, or that they were so drunk they walked around all night with their fly unzipped (a conversation I actually overheard in a crosswalk at an Ivy campus.) These are indications that a good time was had. The object of drinking games is not to get drunk, but to get dangerously drunk.</p>
<p>I don't worry that the majority of these kids will become alchoholics. I worry that they so underestimate the toxicity of alcohol that they will die one night of alcohol poisoning because their friends are too drunk to recognize how far they went, that they will have unprotected sex, that they will be the victims of or commit sexual assault because their judgment is so impaired.</p>
<p>We think we know about this because there's always been drinking on campus. If you want an education, I suggest you find the livejournal community for virtually any college -- well, probably not BYU -- and read the blogs. These are smart, good kids who really underestimate the dangers of alchohol and thinking that they are just a handful of "drunks" who can be separated out in the college admissions process or eliminated by making all dorms substance free just doesn't reflect the reality that I see out there. Alcohol is this generation's drug of choice. They get through all those drug education programs we provide them and don't get the dangers, because our culture is ambivalent -- we lecture one day, wink the next.</p>
<p>ok. ducking my head now and expect to be called alarmist....</p>
<p>By way of example, regarding the change in cultures, in the mid-70s at the Big House in Ann Arbor, you could openly bring in a 12 pack of beer. You could also head out at halftime for more and bring it back in the stadium.
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the student section passed up their empty wine bottles (Boone's Farm, Ripple, Annie Green Springs, etc.) to be gathered up post-game for recycling.
Now you are practically strip-searched on the way in and you can't leave at halftime, unless you are a member of the Victor's Club, meaning you are a financial contributor to the athletic department.</p>
<p>sac is right, it was about 95% male back then. But it was all beer and cheap (apple) wine. 12 packs of beer for $2.00. What are the students drinking now? With all the alcohol poisoning cases, it can't be beer and wine. It has to be, as we used to call it, bottled spirits. Of course, in the State of Michigan the sole wholesaler of bottled spirits is the State of Michigan, so the state has its hand in this as well, both in mark-up profit and taxes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There are plenty of students out there -- and I'm not talking Chico State here -- who pass out or puke regularly. Who drink Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights just about every week and who brag about waking up the next morning not remembering how they made it to their beds, about passing out and peeing on themselves, about the number of spots on campus where they've puked, or that they were so drunk they walked around all night with their fly unzipped (a conversation I actually overheard in a crosswalk at an Ivy campus.)There are plenty of students out there -- and I'm not talking Chico State here -- who pass out or puke regularly. Who drink Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights just about every week and who brag about waking up the next morning not remembering how they made it to their beds, about passing out and peeing on themselves, about the number of spots on campus where they've puked, or that they were so drunk they walked around all night with their fly unzipped (a conversation I actually overheard in a crosswalk at an Ivy campus.)
[/quote]
Source for all the above please, particularly #s who brag about puking and peeing on themselves. Is there a paraphrased quote from your Ivy crosswalk? That would help us get things straight.</p>
<p>The conversation about the fly was overheard. The rest is taken from online journals in which I have read all of the above. I do not have numbers or pretend this is scientific. I was trying to point out what I perceive as a cultural shift in that episodes that once would have been considered embarrassing are now considered worth bragging about. </p>
<p>UMADD -- There's still plenty of beer. But, compared to the 70s, I think, much more gin, vodka, tequila, many of them now flavored and therefore more appealing to "beginning" drinkers.</p>
<p>Chico State's "binge drinking rate" using the same 5-drink measure as the Williams and Dartmouth surveys, was at 56% in 2002.</p>
<p>They have had an alcohol poisoning death in recent years. Freshman frat pledge who drank a bottle of blackberry brandy during the initiation ritual. He had told his mother that the frat he was joining wasn't like the stereotypes. That it was a swell bunch of guys who didn't do all that drinking stuff.</p>
<p>"Source for all the above please, particularly #s who brag about puking and peeing on themselves. Is there a paraphrased quote from your Ivy crosswalk? That would help us get things straight."</p>
<p>Sorry that the campus cleanup people below can't quantify the puking and peeing volume for you. They do, however, add feces into the mix.</p>
<p>My dad always said "don't argue with a crazy man," but somehow I can't resist you, ID--or your tagteam buddy Mini. He also used to say: don't show up at a gunfight armed with a pop-gun, which reminded me of your pop-study, distributed and paid for by a Harvard pop-lecturer with a mostly pop-culture following.</p>
<p>Since you are now picking on Chico State: You say that 56% of the students have consumed 4 or 5 beers over the course of an evening at some single point during their college experience. You go on to say that this translates to a "binge drinking" rate of 56%. And you then correlate that with consuming an entire bottle of brandy so rapidly as to cause death, as if these are even close to being the same sort of thing. How can anyone take this "line of reasoning" seriously, even if they are concerned about their college kids, as all are?</p>
<p>Edit: Thanks, Mini, for reminding us of the one-note Johnny you are.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Since you are now picking on Chico State: You say that 56% of the students have consumed 4 or 5 beers over the course of an evening at some single point during their college experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's not even remotely close to what I said. </p>
<p>What I said was that, in their 2002 annual student survey, Chico researchers found that the binge drinking rate was 56%. Their survey used the same questions and thresholds as the Williams and Dartmouth studies mentioned previously in this thread: five drinks in a row (for both women and men) at least once in the two weeks prior to the survey to qualify as a "binge drinker".</p>
<p>To recap from colleges all using the same threshold in their internal surveys, FSU, Darthmouth, Williams, and Chico State fall in the 48% to 56% range. I have never seen a national average using the 5 drink standard, but presumably it would be somewhat below the 44% national average using Wechsler's 5/4 standard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the student section passed up their empty wine bottles (Boone's Farm, Ripple, Annie Green Springs, etc.) to be gathered up post-game for recycling.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ahhh, yes. I remember it well. It was actually quite a sight to see the thousands of wine bottles (Boone's Farm for me) being passed hand-to-hand in the student section up to the top of the stadium. By Wechsler's defintion, the vast majority of the student body had just "binged" and yet, I know for me and probably most of us, that was the extent of our drinking until the next home game. </p>
<p>If the term "binge drinking" had been invented then and had the media made a big deal about it, we all would have been branded "campus drunks" as ID would phrase it. However, I prefer to think of it as one of the happy memories of college that I prefer to hold on to.</p>
<p>
[quote]
That's not even remotely close to what I said.
[/quote]
That is exactly what you said, and if you don't agree, you need to go back and actually read the Wechsler survey, upon which you have apparently based your entire life. According to Wechsler (and some colleges are now unfortunately, using his questions in their own equally-lame surveys), any person who has had 4-5 beers over the course of a single evening a single time in their college career is a "binge drinker." That is fact. Refute me if you will, Williams College genius. Enough of your lame gain-saying.</p>
<p>Interested Dad, your posts have made it obvious that you are retardedly obstinate in your opinions. First of all, my previous posts are completely irrelevant so I do not see why you gratuitously referenced them. Secondly, I was not bragging about binge drinking frequently; rather, I was using personal experience to shed light on drinking. And quite frankly, you need a life. Drinking is not the decadence of society; there are far more grave issues with which we should concern ourselves. Most people do not drink to get completely wasted; most do so to simply lose inhibition. It is fun. As long as one can balance drinking with academics and other responsibilities (I have a 4.0 GPA, 1500 etc), who cares....Get over your ultra-conservative ways and cease trying to be some kind of panacea to teenage issues.</p>
<p>Oh, by the way, your suggestion for colleges to reject applicants on the basis of their drinking habits is utterly asinine. Not only is that an incredibly subjective criterion, simply because one is a "frat boy drunk", does not mean one will not contribute to the college community. With your theories and unsubstantiated conclusions, you must have done really well at Williams...</p>
<p>And lastly, I do stand by my beliefs that getting under a 1000 on the SAT is truly embarrassing</p>
<p>They prefer to use Wechsler's 5/4 standard for "binge" or "risky" drinking:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Binge drinking is currently defined as a discrete number of drinks on a single occasion. The generally agreed-upon numbers are 5 (or more) drinks in a single episode for men, and either 4 or 5 (or more) drinks for women. At UM, we prefer the criteria of 4 (or more) drinks for women because it accounts for the physiological differences between men and women. Further, this gender-based criteria allows us to compare our data with other post-secondary institutions.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Here are the relevant stats from the U Mich report:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Fifty-two percent of undergraduates report an episode of binge drinking in the past two weeks; 41% of all students living in residence halls have engaged in binge drinking in the past two weeks. This number increases to 82% of those who reside in a fraternities or sororities. The percentages do not vary much by class: 44% of first year students, 48% of second year students, 53% of juniors and 52% of seniors all report at least one binge episode in the last two weeks.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>52% using Wechsler's lower threshold standard would probably put U Mich's binge drinking rate below that of FSU, Williams, Dartmouth, and Chico State.</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to Wechsler (and some colleges are now unfortunately, using his questions in their own equally-lame surveys), any person who has had 4-5 beers over the course of a single evening a single time in their college career is a "binge drinker." That is fact.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is not a fact. I've already provided numerous links to the Wechsler research. The standard for "occasional binge drinking" in his research is five drinks in a row for men, four drinks in a row for women, on one or two occasions in the two weeks prior to the survey. His definition of "frequent binge drinking" is consuming that quanity of alcohol on at least three occasions over the two weeks prior to the survey.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And to be honest, I would estimate at least a third of my class "binge drinks" (I would define binge drinking as 6 or more) both nights every weekend. It is somewhat sad that non-alcoholic activities are so infrequently done now, but I can understand the rampant drinking. I personally enjoy binge drinking and truly do not believe it has any effects on my academics. Furthermore, as long as the binge drinker is responsible and can control his or her actions, I do not see a huge problem with this ever increasing trend. The fact remains that drinking makes a person more sociable and have fewer inhibitions and thus, the trend will only continue...oh, and yes, kids are now starting to drink earlier. It is quite common now for freshmen to binge drink twice a weekend.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ConfusedApplicant is talking about high school, when kids are still under parental roofs. Manners aside, I believe we should listen to what the kids tell us and not just assume things are the same as the 1970s. Interesting other thread on here, with a parent asking about drinking at Northwestern. The responses cover various other colleges as well.</p>