No, that is wrong. 211/428 were location “unknown.” That is less than a majority.
Alh, that information is in no way unique to colleges or fraternities.
Marie - I agree. This thread began with an article on fraternities. I believe fraternities sometimes negatively impact campus culture, but don’t believe fraternity houses are the only places rapes and assaults take place.
I could have stated my point more clearly: It is probably unreasonable to expect my country neighbors to be well prepared to protect themselves from alcohol abuse and sexual assault and rape when they arrive at the state flagship as first year students.
Oh, you’re right about the numbers, Bay. Something less than half were unknown. My bad.
I also agree with you that it’s the college’s responsibility to educate these young freshmen about the dangers present on their campuses. But the Indiana article mentions that the party dorm women were disinclined to listen to their RAs, who, they thought, were not well tuned in to the party scene. Women that were like themselves, but juniors and seniors, would probably be better positioned to deliver advice that they’d heed.
Isn’t it standard now that universities require their incoming students to take an online course on alcohol and campus safety before or during the first week of school? It seems to me that all three of my kids had to do this at three universities, but my memory gets fuzzy about those details in my advanced age.
All I can say is that the crackdown on alcohol on campus - both Greek and non-Greek - is ten times stronger than when H and I were in school and the administration basically turned a blind eye. S is an RA. He monitors his dorm and has to oversee any drinkers pouring out the booze, write them up, etc. That never would have happened in our day (same campus). There’s a lot more oversight of the Greeks than there uses to be, and punishment/probation/sanctions are used. Of course, smart kids can get away with stuff, but the bacchanalia of our youth there is a lot more subdued. (Which is fine w me).
Drinking is a “learn by doing” skill. Just like driving. So the required college alcohol classes really can’t do all that much realistically.
To learn how to drive, kids get a permit, take driver ed, practice drive with mom and dad, pass a driving test, then get a limited provisional license and eventually become fully licensed drivers (in my state) at age 21.
For drinking, we tell kids never ever to do it until they are 21. Which most of them ignore. So they do their learning on an illegal basis in sub optimal conditions with hard alcohol.
I did most of my underage drinking (18 limit at that time) at neighborhood bars that I and my HS friends could walk to. A pretty good/safe place to learn how to drink. At college, I was legal and drinking really wasn’t that big a deal. Since I was legal, the couple of inevitable bad nights I had occurred out in the open where a bouncer or friend or bartender could help me from screwing up too badly.
The 21 age was a good solution to the problem of drinking AND driving. But a very bad solution for teaching the learned skill of drinking. I’d love to see before and after 21 stats data on alcohol poisoning, injuries, rapes, etc. and how that compares to the reduction in drunk driving harm. My sense is that we’ve traded fewer car crashes for more of those other bad things.
Bay: I looked at flagship U’s website and they do have an on-line alcohol education course for entering students. It does not seem to be mandatory. I see no information regarding education about sexual assault prevention. That doesn’t mean it isn’t part of orientation activities.
northwesty: You have described the skills you are teaching your daughter to protect herself from rape. What are your teaching her about alcohol and drinking? Where do you expect her to learn this skill? Is your daughter in college? high school?
And of course, if anyone else wants to answer the question, I’m very interested how you handled the issue as well. I posted what we did in the another thread but could re-post it.
I have to be honest. I’m pretty anti-alcohol in general, other than a glass of wine every now and then. I just dislike the whole scene of going to a party with heavy drinking. I think it’s kind of crass. So I didn’t really want to teach my kids “how to do it” per se.
Hope this isn’t too much of a diversion, but I’d like to vent a little.
Sometimes I think all these college social-life issues are just a giant tangled mess. It’s a complex social system, so if you try to fix a problem by squeezing down on one end, you just cause another problem to erupt out the other end. Here are a few examples -
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You ask the RA’s to curtail drinking in the dorms. This causes students to go to fraternity parties even more so they can get alcohol off university grounds. And if a student gets alcohol poisoning there’s risk that their friends won’t get them medical help for fear of being punished by the college for drinking.
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You want to diminish the importance of fraternities and sororities to the campus social life. So you ban freshman fall rush for sororities, like Indiana did. The hope is that this eases the pressure on students to rush immediately before they know anything and allows them to develop other social ties that aren’t so class based. But to prevent cheating, you need to ban all recruitment activities before spring rush. But this means that sorority members can’t really contact freshman women that much during the first semester, eliminating a source of mentorship, and again funnels freshman woman toward fraternity parties.
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You want to reduce drink driving. So you raise the drinking age to 21. But this just drives 18-20 year old drinking underground, encourages them to pre-game by drinking hard alcohol in their dorm rooms before going out for the night, and gives those who can supply alcohol more power.
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You want to make the sorority houses a relative haven from all the partying, etc … well, we’ve already discussed this one for several pages in this thread.
I’m sure there are other many examples too.
It’s definitely hard to find effective policy without knowing all the trade offs.
ALH – have 3 kids, youngest is still in HS.
For my kids (and especially for the youngest), I’ve basically adopted what I think the actual drinking age law should be. It also synchs up with what my kids’ colleges seem to do. OK to drink a tiny bit at home as a teenager with the family. OK to drink wine or beer once your are out of high school and enrolled at college, but you have to manage that and be smart since it isn’t officially legal. If they get caught in a dorm raid or at a loud party, that is their problem to handle and pay for. One kid had a few bumps in college on this which I chalked up to as part of the learning process.
Stay away from the shots and the hard stuff – too dangerous. Never ever ever drive drunk. Stay away from pot and other drugs, since those are illegal for everyone regardless of age and so will get you into a different category of law enforcement issues than alcohol. All got caught for minor drinking while in HS, which was (in hindsight) welcome since it gave me the chance to punish them and engage with them over drinking. Sooner or later the kid is going to have the inevitable bad drunken night. My goal was for them to have the bad night in a good situation, learn from it and not repeat. I tell them that the first rule of partying is “live to party another day.”
Most of us oldsters started drinking in high school when the legal age was 18. With a 21 legal age, guess what. Kids still start drinking in high school.
One kid is in Europe now for semester abroad where legal age is 18 but lightly enforced. At the orientation session for all the students (who came from countries all over the world) they gave a very stern warning about not binge drinking. Followed up by “Yes all you Americans – we are talking to you!!!” All the non-American kids laughed and rolled their eyes at the Yanks.
I thought the reason to move sorority rush to spring was not to diminish the importance of sororities, but merely because rush is time-consuming, and it was thought that new freshman women ought to settle into college life, and their studies, before taking up several entire long days with sorority rush.
But it’s true that difficult problems don’t usually have simple solutions, and a change can have unanticipated consequences, some of them bad. That’s why I’m dismayed by calls to change the drinking age to 18, from people who, instead of presenting a cost-benefit analysis, present a benefit analysis, where the asserted benefits are far from certain to occur. The claim that an 18-year-old drinking age would lower binge drinking and pregaming among college students seems to me to be speculative at best.
If an 18-year-old or 19-year-old drinking age would reduce binge drinking among college-aged people without causing a significant rise either in drunk driving or in problem drinking among teenagers, then it would be a good change, but the proof of the premise is apparently left to the reader.
“I guess we could teach this in college but it’s a little like teaching that the sky is blue.”
If kids come into college believing that the sky is red, then it’s pretty important to fix that area of ignorance. I’d like to see parents and high schools doing a better job with the education about the sky being blue, but apparently they are dropping the ball.
I actually don’t know specifically why they have delayed sorority rush at Indiana, but I do know that there are a few schools that recently delayed their recruitment process in part to diminish the appeal of Greek life (I don’t think it’s working though). We do know a few parents who have girls at Indiana - they’ve said that Greek life is very important there and sorority rush is especially brutal. They’ve also mentioned the need to get rides to parties as being a negative.
It would be interesting if Congress would allow a few states to switch the age for beer and wine back to 18 as an experiment - maybe just for a few years and only for residential college students who don’t need to drive much? I think that’s ultimately the only way to answer this question.
I like the idea of an experiment. It would be difficult to administer an 18-year-old drinking age just for residential college students, and arguably unfair to young people who don’t go to college. I’d rather see a 19-year-old age-- but that doesn’t solve the problem of those Indiana freshmen getting drunk and getting raped, so… nothing is simple.
my point is that the sororities already sanction the behavior.
the national organizations are just engaged in an aggressive effort to keep a superficial facade to present a certain public image [unclear to accomplish what, but undoubtably in some social circles this is extremely important]. Not unlike some politicians, these sororities are extremely hypocritical.
is it fair to say that if you join greek life that you decided the benefits (whatever those are) outweigh the “documented” reality that you are more likely to either be a rapist or be raped?
“I’d rather see a 19-year-old age-- but that doesn’t solve the problem of those Indiana freshmen getting drunk and getting raped, so… nothing is simple.”
It sure would be nice to see some actual data that showed the impact of 18 vs 21 vs alternatives on drunk driving, binge drinking, rapes, etc. When you squeeze the balloon in one place, it bulges out in another. Could be that the data would show that the current policy (less car crashes traded for more alcohol poisoning and drunk college rapes) is actually the right call. Or maybe not.
My personal favorite experiement would be beer/wine legal drinking age on September 1 of the year in which you turn 18. September 1 of the year you turn 22 for booze. So for almost all kids, high schoolers are not legal drinkers at all, and college kids are not legal booze drinkers. Also could make kids get a drinking license (similar to how a driving learners permit works).
Or December 31, in which case first semester college frosh wouldn’t be beer/wine legal. Hard to enforce around campus, but would be a stab at making the red zone a bit safer. Also would make for a blowout NY eve!
Pizza – 80% chance that your kids are going to be underage illegal drinkers. If you don’t want to teach them, there’s plenty of creepy frat boys who will do that for you instead.
Yes, northwesty, I know quite well that my kids have tried / drunk alcohol. (They’re now of age, so the underage issue isn’t relevant.) It’s not as though I thought they weren’t going to. Of course we talked to them about how to do things safely. TBH, I think the safest place for my S to have a few too many is in his fraternity house, versus going to some bar where he is in danger of being roughed up, or being separated from his buddies, etc. My D is in a bit of an unusual situation insofar as she is at a women’s college where of course there is drinking, but there’s not the culture that there is on co-ed campuses.l
“my point is that the sororities already sanction the behavior [of going and getting drunk]”
Soccerguy, how do the national sororities “sanction such behavior”? Specifics, please, since I’m betting you’ve never seen a letter or piece of correspondence or policy from a national sorority in your life. I would like to know how you think the national sorority headquarters can monitor the behavior of thousands of girls on hundreds of chapters all over the country - some of whom live in a house, others of whom live in apartments or dorms. Do you want ankle bracelets on them? All they can do is a) suggest how to do so safely (always be with a sister, never let your drink unattended, etc.) and b) prohibit alcohol in their own houses - in accordance with the law of the state.
al2simon: Thanks for post #389, which I found quite thought provoking. To me, it seems worth thinking about how we ended up in this situation.
The Parents Forum pretty much caters to parents with kids who have somehow been convinced the best use of their middle school and high school years is creating as perfect a profile as possible for very competitive colleges. And even if we are the furthest thing imaginable from tiger parents, some of our kids do this anyway. They learned somewhere to believe college admission is very important.
And even if we parents are modeling sensible drinking habits, or are teetotalers, some of these high achieving kids end up with the idea binge drinking is a normal part of the college experience. Is it possible to figure out where they are getting that message and change the message?
As far as I can tell, that would be the only way to really fix the problem, though I continue to think my idea of making an example of a few type A students would go a long way. However, for the sake of argument I will happily agree it just drives the problem further underground and makes it more dangerous to student well-being.
So where are they getting this message binge drinking is the right way to party? I have no idea. Does anyone else? I have also been wondering about college success and binge drinking. Is it possible to perform well academically while partying like this? Does the binge drinking represent the celebratory end of having to do all that academic work to get into the right college? — Just tossing an idea out, I’m not arguing it. The whole culture surprises me. I thought we were big partiers back in my day, but this is a whole different level.