<p>Ds and I were talking about his final choices, and he said that on his overnight he was told that the school provides alcohol at parties. I'm just wondering if that's true or whether he misunderstood his host.</p>
<p>For the record, I am not against college-age drinking and support an 18yo drinking age rather than 21yo drinking age. But I was still surprised to hear that the college would actually provide the alcohol to underage drinkers, if from nothing other than a liability standpoint.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether that's true, I'm curious as to how much drinking occurs. Again, I don't have a problem with it, unless it's all falling-down-drunk bnge drinking. Additionally, I'm a little confused; are there sub-free dorms or just sub-free halls at all the dorms?</p>
<p>There are sub-free dorms (like Kershaw) and sub-free halls (as in Norris). That’s because the demand for sub-free exceeds the supply, but they are trying to expand their capacity.</p>
<p>I would sincerely doubt that a school provides alcohol. The liability would be impossible to insure against. My recollection, from the Student Life coordinator, was that the school provides sub-free activities every weekend as an alternative to private parties that students oversee which do include alcohol. I also believe that parties with alcohol are required to tell the school in advance, and the school requires training of ‘hosts’ as to their responsibilities if they are serving alcohol to avoid dangerous situations. The number of alcohol related incidents that resulted in hospitalizations had dropped to 0 as of mid-November as a result of introducing this training requirement this year. Of course my recollection may be wrong on the details.</p>
<p>And yes, there is drinking, but no, only a small fraction of students drink to excess-as is the case everywhere, I suppose. Those that do drink too hard, too often, can’t keep up academically. S lives in a sub-free dorm and says people who live there follow the rules-that means, he and others do their drinking, if they drink at all, very moderately and in other places. It hasn’t been an issue for him or his friends.</p>
<p>Yes, you can’t drink there. Lots of students who don’t disapprove of drinking necessarily or may even drink socially themselves, want a quieter dorm setting and ask for sub-free.</p>
<p>There are definitely those who drink to excess at Grinnell, as there are at every other college. At Grinnell, I get the impression that the College is primarily interested in keeping students safe, preventing property damage and minimizing stupid and risky behavior that so often follows drinking to excess. The SAs (the equivalent of most colleges’ RAs) don’t seem to have the responsibility of busting kids for drinking as they do at other colleges. </p>
<p>These factors, combined with Grinnell’s policy of self-governance, result in an atmosphere where students have to work pretty hard to get “busted” for underage drinking. </p>
<p>Your son will no doubt see some pretty drunk kids (regardless of where he goes), especially at the beginning of school. Reportedly at Grinnell this calms down as the year goes on, the workload increases and the first years get used to their new-found freedom.</p>
<p>There’s a post/thread from a few months ago relevant to this one. It turns out that Grinnell’s new president is a physician and that, several years ago, he testified before Congress on the problem of college age drinking. His office at the NIAAA turned out a white paper on the subject that was sent to every college president. Now that he IS a college president, I would expect that he would be held to the standards he set and recommendations he made while in the role of a government physician who was extremely concerned about this issue. I wonder if the status quo on campus drinking at Grinnell is about to change.</p>
<p>Here is the prior post/thread. In it, there is a link to the white paper report:</p>
<p>I hope that the new president will continue and strengthen recent efforts to educate students and convince them that being falling-down drunk is not cool. Many colleges have strong peer education programs that adress alcohol issues and I hope Grinnell will institute one as well. </p>
<p>I hope (and predict) that this won’t be a from-the-top-down crackdown on student drinking. Given Grinnell students’ fierce pride in their system of self-governance, that could get pretty ugly and I think it would ultimately be unsuccessful. </p>
<p>I agree with the OP that the drinking age should be 18. I also think that 18-year-olds should earn the right to drink by graduating from high school and by participating in alcohol education. What I think most of us really want is that no one feel pressured to drink to fit in and that those who do choose to drink do so responsibly.</p>
<p>Since this all looked too akward to me I had to do some research about drinking in the States and particularly colleges.
All I have to say is “wow”…</p>
<p>First, you Americans have no idea how it looks when students drink a lot. No idea. Come to Czech republic and you’ll see…</p>
<p>And second, you can’t drink.Not only that you are not “trained”, that doesnt matter at all, but you don’T know how to drink not to get drunk. Seriously, my friend who studies on a university in states told me that many Americans go to party with the intention to get drunk and then they are happy that they have succeeded. Unbelievable. Here only people who are in big troubles with alcohol behave like that.</p>
<p>Fortunately for me, I will not drink at the college. And for two reasons - first, it’s expensive, and second, there is not a single American “beer” I could drink and be satisfied.</p>
<p>Anyways, dont take it as an pffense, I just wanted to tell you that those “problems” are nothing. In fact, I am pretty sure that they originate from the fact, that young people in the States are not allowed to drink until they are 21. And everybody likes what is forbidden.
By the way, is it really possible that there are people who go to college and they have never drunk alcohol despite they want to?</p>
<p>There probably are some students who have never had a drink when they go to college. Some parents are very strict or have religious objections. On the other hand, some religious traditions involve drinking wine. In our state of Vermont, it is illegal for parents to serve alcohol to their own children in their own homes! I’m sure this is only enforced in extreme situations, but still…</p>
<p>One problem is that in many areas of the US, there are no public transportation options, so drinking and then driving may happen more often.</p>