honestly, i know that we talk about this nonstop at CC but i just don’t get why greek organizations have remained popular at some (mostly southern) Universities. I wouldn’t feel safe having my kid in a sorority or a fraternity…I don’t like the excluding of others already…but combining it with these issues. Ugh. http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2016/01/all-panhellenic-sorority-activities-suspended
The scariest line to me is in the comments below::
“When I was at Duke a few years ago, every single Thursday (shooters) and most Saturdays, about 6-10 sorority girls would get EMS’d to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and everyone in the administration knew it. This is further proof of how hypocritical and disingenuous Larry Moneta and his administration are. Either do something about it or shut up, down lie through your teeth.”
Sad thing is this likely won’t make a dent in prospective student applications or the excitement among those that have or will receive acceptance letters.
You’d have to know what the number or percentage of non-sorority girls “get EMS’d” to know if the sorority membership was causing the alcohol issues or if perhaps it was just campus culture. How many dorm girls? How many living off campus?
The article didn’t say where the drinking took place or who bought the alcohol.
Personally I don’t give a hoot about whether it’s Greek or not. I have no pterodactyl in that fight. I care more about the fact that we don’t seem to do a good enough job of teaching our young people about how to drink responsibly.
And no, lecturing them repeatedly is not an effective method.
Student expected to fully recover. It’s not clear but Alcohol may not have been the main issue. suspension has been partially lifted and will be fully lifted Monday.
Is this “news” that yet another college student has had so much to drink that they have to be “transported?” I can assure you this is not particular to Duke.
@SouthernHope I’m not sure the Greek system is to blame for this particular problem, but the reason these organizations continue to thrive is because the members really, really enjoy being a part of them. I think at Duke a lot of this drinking is going on a private apartments, not in Greek housing.
The raising of the drinking age has had terrible consequences, as students are far more likely to drink irresponsibly today than when they could drink legally. Wouldn’t it be great if campuses could have a pub where students could go and have a maximum of two or three pints?
From a residential college point of view, a drinking age of <= 18 or >= 22 would be preferable, so that almost all traditional-age college students would fall under the same drinking rules.
In some European countries, the legal drinking age for beer and wine is 14 as long as an adult is present. 16 for purchase and being unaccompanied.
Having the drinking age at 21 just makes alcohol this mysterious thing. No I am not a drinker unless you call a glass of wine four times a year
As an American, I do not see this problem where I live with the young people HOWEVER the DRIVING age is much higher and very$$$! The only time I hear of alcohol incidents are with the American kiddos here. One who is 16 recently was admitted to the ER for alcohol poisoning.
At this point, my kiddo in the university can just visit if he wants to drink because he knows in the US, you will have a record if you get caught. This is the one thing I counseled him on over and over before he left for the states. Even he thinks that having the age so high compels young people to reach for the forbidden, “alcohol fruit.”
It is not the drinking age.
It is not fraternities or sororities.
It is not college alone.
Hard liquor today is flavored like candy and marketed to young people. They market to men and women extremely well. Go into a liquor store and look around.
Doing shots has become extremely popular and is used as a team building exercise, a way to belong. Binge drinking hard alcohol is now what our kids do when they are together.Kids mix alcohol to create all sorts of combinations of flavors that they get each other to try.
Young adults today, just as young adults in the past, believe they are invincible. They do not believe they will die.
They think the world is a Disney theme park or a video game where you are safe and get to reset and try again with a new start. It will not happen to them. They really believe this.
By the time a kid has downed 3 or 4 shots in their first half hour of a party they are just beginning to realize they are getting drunk. They are now drunk enough to lose count and forget how much they have already drank. Another couple of shots and they are in the alcohol poisoning stage. Young, thin girls and boys who are not eating to try and stay thin are even more vulnerable.
They get extremely drunk. Their drunk friends put them to bed. They fall asleep and either aspirate on their puke or they just slowly stop breathing and quietly die in their bed.
My kid, your kid, anybodies kid. Not just the frat kid, not just the partiers. Not just the risk takers. And not just college kids.
It is the culture of binge drinking hard alcohol and doing shots that is killing our young people.
Changing the age from 18 to 21 pushed a lot of campus drinking from beer to sprints (easier to hide and transport), moved drinking to unsupervised areas, put more students in cars to get off campus to drink, and triggered aggressive front loading and binge drinking, unusual in the 70s. Chugalugging a beer is not the same as killing shots.
@snarlatron . I can agree with some of your opinions.
I don’t believe at this time and in this environment that allowing 18 year olds to purchase hard liquor is going to stop or lessen the binge drinking and doing shots.
Hey, maybe I’m wrong. But I’m not giving an 18 yr old a handle of Jack or Fireball to find out. I think that ship has sailed.
I think that, as EarlVanDorn and Europe said, having a campus pub where you can have a couple pints of beer or hard cider as well as non alcoholic beverages (no hard alcohol), would be immensely preferable to what we have today.
There’d be a new way to socialize around alcohol that doesn’t involve lots of colorful shots that get you drunk very quickly.
