Okay. So I am starting to think that Miami may no longer be at the top of our list. As a concerned parent about my daughter being off at school anyway, the idea that they have seen the worst spike in alcohol related ER visits in 20 years and a death related to alcohol is very, very, concerning. The idea that a freshman died 2 weeks ago from drinking is very, very, concerning. Going to discuss with my daughter and going to look at number 2 and 3 on her list a little harder. I guess the deferral letter was a blessing in disguise. I have copied an article below. If you don’t think this applies to you or your kid, you need to wake up. This is a problem and if the university can’t seem to control it, how can you expect it to get any better?
“Seventeen of the people transported were female, and all but two were underage, the Journal News reports.”
OXFORD, Ohio – Twenty-one college-aged students were taken by ambulance from the Miami University area to hospitals for alcohol-related problems last weekend, a spike that is causing concern among city and university officials.
Jon Varle, who has been an Oxford Police sergeant for more than two decades, tells wcpo.com that he’s never seen the drinking problem so bad at Miami. He said the increase in drinking is challenging the city’s emergency services.
If your daughter were to become heavily involved in drinking, she could do that at any college. Likewise, if she’s not a drinker, she will be fine at any college. I am not sure this should influence your decision so much.
bodangles, so you’re telling me that I can look up any school and there will be 20+ ER visits and an alcohol releated death on any given weekend? If that’s the case, then why is this a news story? Not even OU can keep up with those kind of stats! Your comment is kind of backwards. There has to be some accountability on behalf of the university. It has clearly gotten out of hand. I searched Google and no one where is there this kind of problem.
I’m from a school where a student recently fell down the stairs at a frat and died. Nobody called for help for 12 hours. What could the school have done to prevent that? What could the school do to curb drinking? Every school tries but nobody succeeds. It’s on the students.
I’m from a school where a student recently fell down the stairs at a frat and died. Nobody called for help for 12 hours. What could the school have done to prevent that? What could the school do to curb drinking? Every school tries but nobody succeeds. It’s on the students.[ /quote]
Have you ever heard of being disciplined? Not only are you breaking the law when drinking under age, there should be a non-drinking policy in place by the university that if you violate the drinking law (by drinking when under age) that you can be expelled from the university. Too tough? It should be. Parents like myself pay a lot of money for students to attend college. And we expect the institution to respect that and impose rules that will keep the student body safe. Are kids going to drink? Absolutely. Will kids abuse alcohol when knowing they could get kicked out? I highly doubt it. So I disagree with you. Ultimately the responsibility does fall back on the school, not on the students.
In no way am I defending the behavior of these students, but this is not something the university administration itself can prevent. What exactly do you expect a university administration to do - escort the kids everywhere like a helicopter parent? No college will provide that level of oversight. These are young adults, and reasonably intelligent ones at that. This event is tied to the greek community (representative of only 35% of the student body), and has resulted in campus-wide discussion along with university administration meetings with the leadership of the greek community - which hopefully will result in some changes. Bad PR for Miami University for sure, but the way collegeDAD2017 implies that this level of binge drinking is uncommon at most other universities is woefully naive. Many colleges go to extreme lengths to hide these sorts of incidents from the press, so at least the Oxford community owned up. It’s certainly a tragedy that a Miami student died recently due to alcohol consumption, but the fact that the friends of those affected this past weekend did the right thing to get them help and prevent additional deaths deserves pause and shows that there is a support structure in place.
You probably should have your DD live at home if her risk of becoming a big drinker is so obvious to you. University is not a supervised setting for children. These adults choose to drink. Plenty of them can drink legally. Try a dry campus? This expectation of safety is magical thinking.
I will second the remark by bodangles that students at almost all colleges, public or private, simply go off-campus to drink and the administration can do almost nothing about it. If you are looking for colleges that threaten students with expulsion for drinking, you are largely limited to very conservative religiously-based colleges. In Ohio, these are probably limited to Cedarville, Mount Vernon, and perhaps a few others; but these issues will certainly exist on a large scale at OU, OSU, BGSU, Kent, Cincinnati, Dayton, etc.
This is a tragedy any way you look it. Have to really feel for the family. We know students at Miami, OSU, OU, and many other schools, large and small. While I do believe these circumstances can happen anywhere, it may be happening more at certain schools than others. In our area, Miami is known as more of a party school as is OU. Fair? Maybe, maybe not. You have to know your own child and know if they would be influenced. It’s harder than you think to say no if the friends you’ve made are taking part.
In the end each student/family chooses a college based on many factors. Reducing one from the list for this reason is as good as any.
@LoveandHonor You mentioned that the alcohol related hospitalization are related to the Greek community. Are you assuming that from this article? It mentions that the Greek community had a moratorium until Thursday and then the spikes started on Thursday. That is when most of the drinking starts at Miami so I think assuming this was only the Greek community is a stretch. The death 2 weeks ago had nothing to do with the Greek community. I am not saying that the Greek community wasn’t involved but the article really doesn’t say that those taken to the hospital were Greek.
Also, what is the criteria for the hospital visits? Is a kid puking in a dorm a catalyst for an ambulance call? Who calls the ambulance, who gets the students to the ER, do they have a choice in the matter? Is there some hysteria in the ambulance calls?
Yes, drinking does go on at every college campus. However, having family members at Miami, I can tell you there is a lot of pressure to drink and a lot of pressure to fit in - especially in the Greek community. Perhaps there were more calls this past weekend because of the students death, however, according to what i read, policemen happened upon a girl who couldn’t stand and had a dangerously high blood alcohol content so it wasn’t a case of hysteria in making an ambulance call. While alcohol and drugs will be available on any college campus, we need to ask if the environment would make our own child more susceptible to succumb to peer pressure. There is an definitely an underlying pressure to fit in - Miami students are ranked as the “best looking”, the school is ranked right up there with OU as a top party school - naturally, it’s rather isolated and not a lot more to do around the area, there is also a pressure to get into the top sororities and fraternities - more than I’ve seen at other colleges. Those things along with the academic pressure to attain the GPA required to be accepted into the business school, if you weren’t directly admitted, is difficult for many. My daughter has two friends at Miami who developed eating disorders because they wanted to look like their other sorority sisters -sad but true. She has another friend who began suffering from severe depression because she felt like she didn’t fit in and was just under the required GPA for acceptance into the business school. It’s definitely an amazing school with top professors and one of the best business programs around, the campus is one of the most beautiful you’ll find, but you need to understand the culture of the campus and ask if your child has the ability to thrive in that environment. Miami has many notable alumni and great job placement - my step-daughter is coming out of the business school with an amazing job offer - again, you just need to know your child and understand the culture.
Call me old-fashioned and call me naive, but the best we can do as parents is try to teach our kids to make good decisions in life. Once they leave the nest, they are ADULTS, our job is (nearly) done. At that point, the only person responsible for their behavior is them. You can blame the school, you can blame the municipality, you can blame the frat or sorority, you can blame their friends, but the only one truly responsible is them. I will be sending my S out into the wild in a few months and I pray every day that we’ve done a good job teaching him to make good decisions in life. Time will tell.
21 students taken to ER. 21 students should be expelled for violating drinking rule. No one is asking them to escort them like a “helicopter parent!” What better proof do you need than alcohol poisoning and an ER visit?
Listen, trying to jump on my back like I think my daughter is not going to drink as if I am some naive parent is ridiculous. To ignore a problem when you have this number of students taken to the ER at one time is complete lack of failure on the administration. But once again, this is the problem with society in general today. No consequences for your behavior. If you have a law or a rule broken, punish the student. Simple solution. The “oh well, they do it at every other campus” excuse is pathetic on your part and parenting expectations like that are most likely the reason 21 students ended up in the ER in the first place.
Simple solutions are for simple problems. This is not a simple problem and your condescending and vaguely angry posts are not helping your position.
If it’s so simple, why does every campus struggle with this issue?
Let me list the consequences for drinking that are posted on every door in my dorm at move-in.
So if a minimum $500 fine, going to court, getting their license suspended for 12 months, possibly losing their housing AND “other sanctions” as the university sees fit doesn’t do it… Why on Earth do you think it’s so simple? What will expulsion do that losing housing won’t?
Do you think they go to college and it just happens? If you think college creates this culture, you couldn’t be more wrong.
The culture begins in their parent homes, their own communities all the way to middle school.
So yes if their learned behavior by participating or observing it will be increased in college. Just like inflation, the older they get the price goes up.