“Why society doesn’t learn any lessons” - it is not up to society, it is up to each family to teach values. However, I am for much harsher penalties. But we cannot ask for harsher penalties at the time when the government is letting thousand of hard core criminals back on the streets way before their due time. So, forget harsher penalties, when the trend is going backwards.
What if the two guys who observed the assault at Stanford had been under 21 and had been drinking?
Would they have felt as willing as the two graduate students did to stop and report the assault? Or would they have decided not to intervene because they were afraid that they themselves could be expelled or arrested for underage drinking?
It’s something to think about.
If we make the penalties for underage drinking harsher, students will be motivated not to report dangerous situations.
Drinking age for beer/wine in licensed bars should be the January 1 following your 18th birthday. Liquor and purchases stay at 21.
Then colleges and police vigorously enforce the rules (including drunk driving).
Those rules target the most risky stuff but without being stupid/prohibition – HS, 1st semester freshman, underground pre-gaming, hard stuff.
ummm I remember the drinking age of 18, then 19, up in NY state. The binge drinking was like nothing I had ever seen before…the only difference I can see is that in those days the wild parties were openly advertised…“65 keg party” anyone? as a freshman girl, I didn’t go anywhere without my posse, but still…things happened. I still remember our NYC friend who drove off a group of aggressive party boys as they harassed us. all he did was say something quietly to one of them and they walked away. never did find out what that was. I feel lucky to have gone through it relatively unscathed. others were not so lucky, someone I knew had permanent brain damage from a drunken fall. all of this to say that legal drinking at 18 is not a solution in my opinion. but what is?
When I taught my D how to drive, one important lesson was “You never argue right-of-way with a truck. It doesn’t matter who is actually right. Physics agrees with the truck. Avoid the argument in the first place.”
The same lesson applies to women getting drunk to the point where they lose control. It doesn’t matter that rape is always wrong. Physical strength agrees with the rapist. All women can do is minimize the likelihood of the problem happening in the first place.
“The same lesson applies to women getting drunk to the point where they lose control.”
Not just women. Men die and suffer terrible injuries from this behavior, too.
If we eradicated sexual assault from the world, it still wouldn’t be safe to drink yourself into a stupor. You’re risking your life every time. I don’t know how to get people to take that message seriously, but I hope we keep saying it anyway.
Are you suggesting that the victim in the Stanford case put herself behind a dumpster with a man on top of her… and then was too drunk too fight him off?
I agree with you that women need to take responsibility for keeping themselves safe. But this particular case is a bad one to use as an example. This is not a woman date raped by a guy she liked but didn’t want to have sex with. This is not a woman who went back to a guy’s room and was too intoxicated to give consent. As far as the facts have been portrayed, she was assaulted by an athlete-- strong, and in top physical condition, and was unconscious for most of the attack.
Men shouldn’t stick their penises into unconscious women. That’s a first step.
You are arguing with the truck. It doesn’t matter you are right about this.
The woman was drunk to the point of becoming unconscious. That made her a very easy target for this type of sexual predator. If she wasn’t this drunk, this particular risk would have been lessened. Not to zero, but lowering your risk is very beneficial.
“Are you suggesting that the victim in the Stanford case put herself behind a dumpster with a man on top of her… and then was too drunk too fight him off?”
No.
“this particular case is a bad one to use as an example.”
That’s why I didn’t use it as an example. I explicitly said I was talking about the inherent danger that would be there in a world without sexual assault.
“I agree with you that women need to take responsibility for keeping themselves safe.”
Do they (and men too)? It seems we can’t talk about that. We lost a CC student to alcohol poisoning several years ago. Others fall down stairs or drown in rivers or stumble in front of trains. Some dead; some paralyzed; some vegetables. Lots more become alcoholics and ruin their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It’s all terrible; it’s all preventable. It’s all in significant part because our culture says that alcohol abuse is OK and a normal part of college.
More kids just wreck other people’s weekends and property by being disorderly and vomiting. That’s not OK, either, and we shouldn’t shrug it off.
I think one issue completely ignored on this topic is the social acceptability of equating alcohol with having a good time. And that extends beyond college kids and to adults.
Adults seem to be incapable of getting together socially without alcohol. Adults are teaching and role modeling that the best way to have a good time with a group of friends is to drink.
Can’t we all agree that rapes are caused by rapists and that drinking is never an excuse or mitigating factor BUT ALSO discuss ways to curb binge drinking and encourage students to protect each other? @Marian said:
That is why the college’s alcohol policy needs a “Good Samaritan” exception and why bystander intervention training is critical. I’m using Pomona’s alcohol policy as an example but I think it’s fairly typical. It specifically says:
.http://catalog.pomona.edu/content.php?catoid=12&navoid=1753#Alcohol_Policy Also as part of the Teal Dot bystander intervention training, they discussed the psychology of group situations, and how the bigger the group the easier it is to assume someone else will speak up or do something. They talked about ways to intervene, including by creating a diversion if you’re afraid of a direct confrontation. For example, going up to one of the participants (potential victim or potential offender) and maybe gently putting your arm on his/her back and saying something like “hey I need to use the bathroom, take me to the bathroom right now!” Just to break up the situation and steer the potential victim/offender apart. Or even just asking another bystander to take a look and see if they agree with you that something is wrong. Better yet, offer to walk one of the drunk participants back to his/her dorm or get him/her a ride or call his/her friend.
^ Or that you need alcohol to unwind and relax after a tough day or week. I am very tired of seeing drunkenness used as an excuse or mitigating factor for crime OR victimhood. You get drunk by drinking one drink at a time. It’s not a surprise or accident. It’s totally predictable and preventable. In our culture being taking advantage of in some way while drunk is terribly predictable. How many pics of drunk people with Sharpie drawings on them, or embarrassing youtube videos of stupid, sloppy behavior and the like have to end up on the internet before young people realize they can’t even trust their own friends to respect them when they are drunk, much less strangers or sexual predators?
I question the claim of causality here. I would suggest that whatever’s going on in the United States, the drinking age is at most a symptom, not a cause. Consider that the raising of the drinking age was an attempt to stop all sorts of irresponsible drinking-related behaviors among teens, for starters.
Also, I will note that the percentage of adults who consume alcohol in the United States has remained remarkably stable for a long time, according to the CDC—the actual recent shift has been a shift whereby a larger portion of women who consume alcohol now binge drink.
Drug use, since it was mentioned at the outset, has been increasing slightly lately, but that (slight, remember!) increase can be explained pretty much entirely by an increase in marijuana use—take marijuana out of the numbers, and drug use has actually been flat to decreasing for a good while.
And as for sexual irresponsibility, by pretty much any measure, rates of irresponsible sexual behavior have been steadily dropping for the past couple decades. There has, however, been a greater awareness of the dangers of irresponsible sexual behavior generally and issues relating to sexual assault in particular, but that’s different from behavior.
“I would suggest that whatever’s going on in the United States, the drinking age is at most a symptom, not a cause.”
Agreed. That’s what the best data suggest. We had a huge problem with college kids abusing alcohol before the drinking age was raised, and a bigger problem with high schoolers than we have now. The higher age does create perverse incentives to binge before parties, but that seems more than balanced by the fact that it effectively raises the cost of alcohol for underage people.
Instead of discussing problems related to alcohol, like health issues, traffic accidents, rapes, domestic abuse, financial loss etc., loudly on all social, print and visual media we are hoping to fix it by lowering drinking age?
I’m all for holding boys responsible for their acts but girls need to have some responsibility. Most rapes happen to ones who drink and hang out with athletes or sorrority dudes after dark. Not that that’s the reason rapes happen but using common sense is not a crime either.
This sounds so plausible, but all the studies I’ve seen say that most binge drinkers started in high school or earlier. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm
I do think pre-gaming, and drinking stronger stuff (flavored alcohols and the like) instead of beer has not helped.
The College Confidential student who died of alcohol poisoning used to claim because he was a practiced drinker he knew what his limits were. He didn’t. http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/04/in-postings-a-tragic-portrait-of-defiance-2/
Tbh I think the drinking culture of the US itself is a contributing factor. My family comes from another country, and I’ve found that during visits there, alcohol is considered more to be a side thing rather than the main focus of entertainment. For example, many buffets there have free alcohol taps where anyone can get alcohol- I’d shudder to think how many people would get raging drunk from that in the US, but no one there was overly inebriated at all. So, that country doesn’t have an age limit, but in addition to that the attitude towards the role of alcohol in social situations is different.
I do think that lowering the age limit to 18 will discourage “underground” drinking, though.
The prohibition imposed on 18, 19, and 20 year olds has worked about as well as national prohibition between 1920 and 1933. It drives drinking underground, causes kids to turn to easily concealable liquor, puts drinkers in cars as they go off campus, creates a “forbidden fruit” glamor, causes exaggerated drinking when it’s available, etc.
Sororities are women’s organizations.