My D and I just visited for Make it Miami day on Friday. During the campus tour the student guide mentioned that they had just finished “recruitment” or what we old folks used to call rush. Not saying it was all greek related but the timing is likely more than coincidental
@collegeDAD2017 I think you posed a valid question (I have a HS Junior looking at Miami and Elon as her top choices, both have a bit of a party reputation) and regret to read many comments seem negative. I understand exactly how you are feeling! I very much agree with the well written response by @STEM2017, the best we can do is try to teach our kids to make a good decision. I don’t mind if my daughter drinks in college, I did. However, I do teach her about drinking all the time. I encourage beer only as the (mostly female) trend of drinking Vodka out of water bottles seems to be a factor in most over-drinking emergencies. I also show her pictures… pictures of students who are in a coma, those who have died… simply to scare the daylights out of her. I certainly do not turn a blind eye and think she won’t party in college. I talk to her about drinking. In the end, I can only hope I taught her well and she will make the right decisions. At this point it’s on her… not the town, not the university… her.
DD goes to UAHuntsville, a pretty quiet campus if you walk through it on a Saturday night. A very different experience than Miami & Oxford. She’s had classmates with alcohol troubles even there. She does not imbibe, and her GPA backs up that claim.
Students will generally take the values they already have. I don’t recall any of my teetotaler friends suddenly becoming boozehounds, but a couple from high school did dry out a little while at Miami.
It’s all about the kid.
If you search you will find past, similar, incidents at other well respected institutions. It is a good thing to analyze each school’s response to the incident and steer your D to schools with policies that you agree with.
While doing college search with my D, I definitely researched party reputation and reports of pressure to drink. I looked at nonofficial videos posted online. I used many and varied sources to try to get a feel for the school’s culture. D applied only to no Greek or low Greek schools. My D was fine with me making the first cut for colleges to apply to.
She is very happy where she ended up and has a group of friends who do not use drugs or alcohol. She has seen drunk students and was very happy to witness bystander intervention. I specifically asked if she has experienced drunks puking in the bathroom, since it is directly across the hall from her room and I read many reports of that being a problem at many schools, and she said No.
She is someone with no need to impress anybody, she is very clearheaded, and she is quite happy to play games for fun. I was less worried about her binge drinking than her having to deal with the effects of others’ drinking.
While you can certainly take into consideration whether heavy drinking is pervasive, don’t penalize a school for heavy ER visits. There will be some alcohol at basically every college and all students should be comfortable calling for emergency services when a person drinks or uses drugs and needs medical attention. Deaths occur when students are afraid they’ll be suspended, expelled or arrested for underage drinking. No one should die because they drank too much.
So my point is, check the level of partying at prospective colleges. but more importantly check that there are Good Samaritan rules in place. It could save YOUR child’s life.
FWIW, Miami has a Good Samaritan policy.
Other than someplace like BYU, you won’t find that kind of policy enforced anywhere. You can debate the merits of this approach, but most colleges have decided to NOT heavily discipline underage drinking. It just drives it underground, and does not stop it, and makes it less likely that students will call for help if someone has had too much to drink. Both of my kids’ colleges have had that type of policy. One is a “real” adult now, and did not drink much in college. She has maybe 1-2 glasses of wine a week as an adult. The other is a college senior doesn’t like the taste and doesn’t touch the stuff (going to grad school visits now, and finding it annoying that the grad students keep wanting to take them to bars).
Your kid is likely to find it at any school if she wants it. The school administration is not going to be strict with them unless you pick a school of a very specific type.
There was no spike. There were actually less visits this year than last after Greek rush and 11 of the recent 21 were Greek affiliated. If you’ve waited until your kid is 17 or 18 to have frequent conversations about the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol, you’re too late. They won’t listen because they are immortal. Miami is no better or no worse than any public university. Want to restrict your young adult’s access to abuse substances? I suggest a religiously affiliated school or a nunnery.
I am of a couple of minds on this. I have two Ds in college at the moment. At my youngest Ds U. if you get caught with alcohol in your room the first time you are probation, the second time you will be expelled. The same goes if you are off campus and are arrested (frankly for a variety of reasons). The number one reason for arrest at her campus is public urination. I like this approach though unless you are in a substance free dorm you are not specifically dinged for merely being drunk underage unless you are arrested for it. They don’t publicize any good Samaritan policy though I asked them and they would not arrest or discipline someone who had been drinking if they called because they were concerned for someones safety.
At my older Ds university they do have a good Samaritan policy which they publicize. It was part of the parents video we watched at orientation. Both have seen their share of very drunk, sick, and generally misbehaving students. Neither is a student at Miami University. I think most universities publicly don’t condone underage drinking but know it occurs. Policing a midsized towns worth of students is a challenge and they will only deal with things when the behavior becomes blatant. Unfortunately in this case it became deadly.
I find it interesting that the Cincinnati Enquirer story mentioned “Blackout Thursday”. This is the type of event that I think should be dealt with fairly severely. There is a lot left unknown such as just where were these people drinking, who was serving it, were the freshmen girls encouraged to drink (with a name like blackout thursday one would be suspicious). I think if they can determine that this was an organized event and who the upperclassmen who organized it were then I think criminal charges are in order. They would be if I hosted such a party and I would likely be charged with manslaughter if someone died at my house while serving them alcohol. Legally is a 21 year old different than someone their parents age?
@studentsmom16 I do think the Greek system at Miami creates a different type of party atmosphere than OU (that’s where my younger D goes). OU’s reputation is largely due to it’s off campus parties (Halloween, over 30k people attend this party each year. Most are from out of town) and it’s Fests (Palmer Fest, essentially a block party and music festival). Both are planned and have a large police presence. OU’s Greek system exists but does not seem to be nearly as large or as selective as Miami’s. There is no doubt that students get drunk and can behave badly at times but it has a different feel than Miami does. Parties at Miami aren’t so large but they are frequent at the many fraternities and sororities and much less supervised. I get the sense that to be included in a frat party is socially important and that drinking is seen as a benefit given only to those included. Even those not in the Greek system are affected by it. Being Greek at OU doesn’t carry near the cachet or social importance that it does at MU.
My middle son went to a very geek oriented high school and was home most nights to study. I’m not naive enough to think that he could not have been exposed to alcohol, but the opportunities were few. We did not have alcohol in the house and his friends and their parents were quite serious about school.
In his first week on campus last (freshman) year, my 18-year-old son went with some friends from the honors dorm to visit some fraternity events. At one of the houses, they served him some kind of jungle juice, very sweet with lots of alcohol. He was encouraged to chug it. The alcohol hadn’t even hit before he had another. He does not remember how many he ultimately was served.
On his way back to the dorm, he started to feel terrible and by the time he got home he was staggering and swerving down the hall, obviously seriously inebriated. His resident advisor (thankfully) intervened, but had to report him. Because he did not drink on campus, the damage was limited to $500 to pay for a couple of alcohol/substance abuse education classes. I think he was also on probation for a semester.
Alcoholism is a serious issue in our family, especially given that several family members on both sides have struggled with alcoholism. So far, the slip-up last year seems to have been a net-positive because our son knows first hand what can happen. He is very serious about school and his health and works out regularly. He knows about his family history and that there he may have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Still, I was pretty pissed off that fraternities don’t seem to have changed much since I was in college back in the horse-and-buggy days. I know that movies glorify fraternity excesses, but it seems like the universities (not singling out Miami) could do more to police the fraternity row parties, especially those intended to attract pledges. (And I also know that Miami has already been cracking down.)
Anyway, more heat than light on this issue from one parent.
Postscript, my wife and I are overall very happy with the education our son is getting at Miami. It’s a beautiful campus in a great little college town. We were concerned that our Arizona son wanted to go to college 1800 miles from home. But, he is doing very well in biomedical/mechanical engineering and was privileged to be selected into the Lockheed-Martin Leadership Institute. He doesn’t even seem to mind the weather that much.