<p>This one has been well-studied, with a good test case, at the University of Oklahoma. After a spate of on-campus drinking deaths, alcohol was banned on campus, entirely, for everyone - faculty and college president included. And strongly enforced. The result, naturally, was that some drinkers left campus to imbibe in town, and, for a time, the local police were unhappy with the new resources they needed to devote to student inebriation. But, overall, student binge drinking and heavy drinking dropped precipitously - one now had to go make an effort to "blackout". And no, there wasn't a spate of drinking and driving deaths. </p>
<p>Is this my preferred solution? Not at all. But for the vast majority of students, it beats the current status quo. And it does so not because would-be heavy drinkers become teatotallers, but because they become occasional binge drinkers instead. One in three college campuses are now "dry".</p>
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Colleges don't want to do anything to encourage drinking and driving, which is why many of them "allow" it on campus.
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<p>If this is true, I think it is a copout. In our area kids are inundated relentlessly with the "don't drink and drive" message. They all know it's dangerous and wrong to do so. If colleges were stricter, and if more kids broke more laws by drinking and driving, maybe there would be more attention paid to this big problem, and maybe eventually there would be less of a problem.</p>
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If colleges were stricter, and if more kids broke more laws by drinking and driving, maybe there would be more attention paid to this big problem, and maybe eventually there would be less of a problem.
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so wait, you want more people to drive drunk? because they aren't doing it 'enough' now; if they did and mabey ruined some lives in the process, then there would be policy change? no flaws in that logic</p>
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ID- It seems to be pretty easy to get free drinks on campuses. Crashing frat parties is pretty much the norm, or Otis tags along with Biffy and Buffy and lets them pay.
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<p>Each campus has to figure out what works. It might surprise you to know that I think having alcohol available at large campus parties, in a semi-controlled environment, so there is no need to "pre-game" is one approach that can work. I don't really think prohibition is the optimum approach. Again, my goal would not be to stop college drinking, but to: </p>
<p>a) start removing the frequent and heavy binge drinking elements from campus.</p>
<p>b) deal rather harshly with town drunk behaviors</p>
<p>Again, it depends on the particulars. There are some colleges where the culture is so out of control, nobody will every change it short of total ban on alcohol.</p>
<p>bogart I am so glad your school has a program like this in place. It must be a wonderful school with caring administration in place that they have a program to try and educate students rather than just toss them out to fend for themselves. I hope your son takes takes this as a wake up call and that between the school program and the parent program he comes out the other end of this a little wiser. My thoughts are with you.</p>
<p>gladmom- That might be one of the worst concepts I have ever seen expressed on this or any other forum. Sorry, but that is a really, really BAD idea.</p>
<p>I would start by asking, right on the college application, "Have you ever broken the law through use of alcohol or other drugs. If so, please explain." </p>
<p>Let the kids lie. Let the parents lie. Let the high school guidance counselors lie. That's just fine. Just asking the question (without necessarily making use of the answers), and letting folks know that colleges are going to ask, would make a HUGE difference.</p>
<p>I don't know what the solution to all of this. I think that colleges should be making a bigger effort to curb binge drinking and should start by requesting/requiring the frats and other groups that are most responsible for it to front the effort. Right now they are turning a blind eye to the problem. Not sure if just making the entire campus dry is the answer either, as the drinking would go off campus, and add the drinking and driving problem. It isn't just college kids who have this problem either. In this area, if you go to any of the courts, they are inundated with young males, in particular, who are either drinking and driving, or doing something stupid while drunk.</p>
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I would start by asking, right on the college application, "Have you ever broken the law through use of alcohol or other drugs. If so, please explain."
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<p>Good place to start.</p>
<p>I would also include "Binge Drinking Rate" as 10% in the USNEWS rankings.</p>
<p>And, since the "best" schools have the "best" students from the "best" families, they should be expected to have fewer of these unsavory problems. So come up with a "Predicted Binge Drinking Rate" based on SAT scores with the "best" schools having the lowest predicted rates. Then, ding those schools that underperform their predicted rates for another 10% in the rankings.</p>
<p>Maybe add a third component: Alcohol poisoning hospitalizations per year per 1000 students.</p>
<p>Tough to do. There are so many games being played as it is with figures being reported by College Board, USNews,etc. Someone has to monitor the numbers.</p>
<p>Actually, it isn't hard to monitor the binge numbers at all, as they are compiled by two third parties, research groups at Harvard School of Public Health and Southern Illinois University. But currently, unless they choose (or you actually ask the campus alcohol and drug coordinator for them - they are required to give them to you), the figures remain private.</p>
<p>MomofWildChild: I was NOT advocating kids going out and driving drunk as a solution to any problem. Sorry for the misunderstanding. What I was trying to say was that I don't think that a school should use the excuse of trying to prevent drinking and driving by condoning alcohol use on campus. I don't believe that it is OK to ignore any illegal or harmful behavior because it might prevent a more harmful behavior. There are laws outside of campus that deal with illegal behavior.</p>
<p>I think that IF no-drinking rules on campus are enforced, and IF students choose to go off campus to do it instead, then they risk getting caught breaking the law, which would have real-life consequences, which might bring about improvement in future behavior. This is exactly what happened at U of Oklahoma, according to mini. And the drinking culture changed as a result of it. There can be deaths when alcohol is uncontrolled, and deaths from drunk driving. It sounds like in the Oklahoma case, things got much better on campus, and there wasn't much of a problem with the drinking and driving either.</p>
<p>I would, of course, prefer that NO ONE ever drove with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.</p>
<p>Our area is very, very tough about drinking and driving. As a result, our courts are inundated with such cases, and it seems that a lot of people have been in trouble for that reason. Does it curb the drinking? Maybe. I don't know. It certainly gives a lot of people horrendous driving records. And still there are the tragedies. </p>
<p>There were drunks in my day at college; some have grown into drunks to this day. It seems to me that the binge drinking is much worse now, and alcohol related deaths among young people have gone up. Though I knew many kids who had some bad consequences from overdrinking, I did not hear of anyone dying from over consumption unless driving was involved. Now I actually know people touched by alcohol related deaths with no cars in the picture. That does scare me. </p>
<p>The best way to do this is if all of the colleges, or the vast majority of them could get together and agree on a dry campus policy, and to crack down on substance abuse. As it is, most of the college officials are just hoping that the age of consent for drink is lowered to 18, so that they are further off the hook.</p>
<p>interesteddad has managed to hijack yet another thread. This one was about the OP's kid's situation. If you want to debate binge drinking or frats/non-frats and alcohol, you should start your own thread.</p>
<p>Several times on CC I have seen a thread that has lead me to thinking about a similar or linked topic and I have started a new thread on that topic in general, so as not to hijack a thread about a specific person's specific situation.</p>
<p>I simply offered some honest advice to the original poster to be very leary of fraternity membership for her binge drinking son. That was it. Totally relevant advice to her situation.</p>
<p>The frat boys came out of the woodwork expressing their total dismay that anyone could associate fraternities, of all things, with binge drinking. They hijacked the thread.</p>
<p>They tend to be the waterhole on many campuses. Yes, I know it is not all frats, but the connection is clearly there. I wish the frats would get together on a national basis and work for dry parties and events. That would make a big impact.</p>
<p>I dont know where your son is going but if the school offers "Wellness" housing - ask him to consider it or make it a part of your "contract" with him.
My two older ones were both non-drinkers and we very uncomfortable about spending their early college years around kids who drank and partied.
Wellness housing proved a good option for them - there are also usually special programs and non-alcholic activities dorm wide as well.</p>
<p>JustAMomof4, Did your children find that many of the students in wellness housing were more willing to drink heavily (sneaking it) than those not in wellness housing? My son says that many students in wellness housing are
there because their parents require it. Many of them apparently had some problems regarding illegal substance activity prior to college, and their parents require that they go into those dorms, rather than by choice.</p>