<p>Just thought I'd share this article from the New York Times Magazine about the recent actions of colleges against fraternities. </p>
<p>I was just looking at son's admission forms for Penn State and there is a dorm for students who pledge not to use alcohol, tobacco or drugs in their living space. It's called the 'Living in a Free Environment House' or LIFE House. It's a great idea, actually, but what 17-18 yr old thinks of these things? And about the drugs, that's a real no no. I don't want any of that around my sons.</p>
<p>honestly that kind of stuff is around at a lot of schools, and if you don't want to be around it you can choose not to be around it, from what i've noticed. if you have problems with a roommate doing that kind of stuff, you talk to somebody and work on getting moved. i wouldn't have a problem living in a place like that.:)</p>
<p>NYU has what used to be called "SAFE" housing, but the name was recently changed to "Choices". Always good to be politically correct, no?</p>
<p>alongfortheride, I saw that a dorm at Tulane offers the same option as the abovementioned dorm at Penn State. (a dorm for students who pledge not to use alcohol, tobacco or drugs in their living space) Do you know anything about it?</p>
<p>I read this in hardcopy this morning. For me some of the salient quotes were:
[quote]
''We just didn't see a way to dramatically change the fraternity culture without removing alcohol,'' said Bob Biggs, executive vice president of Phi Delta Theta, when we met last fall in his office at the fraternity's spotless, museumlike international headquarters in Oxford, Ohio
[/quote]
[quote]
And many of us eagerly participated in drunken hazing, which most of the hazers and hazed saw as a kind of comic relief integral to fraternal bonding. To my brothers and me, a dry fraternity would have been inconceivable.
[/quote]
[quote]
But the more I went on about our ''huge keg parties,'' the more pathetic I felt. Was I really trying to impress college students? And were all of my favorite fraternity stories really about getting loaded?
[/quote]
[quote]
But the greatest opposition to dry fraternities often comes from alumni. Westol has received hundreds of e-mail messages from angry alums who, he said, ''can't imagine that a fraternity can be fun without alcohol.'' He went on to say that among the biggest challenges in persuading current fraternity members to take the dry policy seriously are alums who return to the chapter armed with countless stories about the fraternity's drunken past -- or, worse yet, with six-packs.
[/quote]
and
[quote]
I mean, we're like 19, 20, 21, many of us have been drinking regularly since high school, we join a fraternity partially for the social scene and now we're supposed to just not drink? It was like telling a monk that he can't pray.''
[/quote]
</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>''can't imagine that a fraternity can be fun without alcohol.'' <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>That's really sad.</p>
<p>I was surprised to learn how many fraternities have already gone "dry" and colleges that have taken action to restrict alcohol on campus. </p>
<p>It is ironic that many of our local high schoolers will find it harder to party with alcohol in college than it is now in HS.</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder if there was less drinking on campuses when the drinking age was 18!</p>
<p>I wonder how my son will handle this. He is not a partier at all. His idea of a good time is rehearsing with his jazz band or eating a good dinner out someplace or, of course, the ever-present lure of a video game. He seems to avoid most of the social settings where (I suspect) there could be alcohol or drugs. That avoidance policy may work in HS, but I wonder how it will work in college.</p>
<p>My two older kids are not into the drinking scene at all and their HS friends that are now in college (almost all) have also managed to avoid it. I know, can you believe it - college kids who don't drink!! Of my older sons 7 friends who are all college freshman, one has started drinking. </p>
<p>My daughter is a sophmore in college and none of them got into the drinking thing. I'm not saying that they all absolutely abstained but most were in a Christian youth group in High School and just didn't connect with people that got into partying. One of them was in the substance free house at Penn State. A couple of the kids, including my daughter, go to private Christian colleges where they take sign a morals contract pledging to abstain from alcohol, drugs, etc. At my daughters school, the kids that drink (everyone knows who they are), are the ones that are looked down on.</p>
<p>Why is it that we assume that most adults do not drink until they are drunk but that it should be the norm for college kids?</p>
<p>kathiep - Very interesting question. I would have to say that most of the adults I know drink far less than college students and many abstain totally -- so, as you say, why is it considered the norm for college students to drink?</p>
<p>carolyn - </p>
<p>many college student's have yet to grow up (no offense to the college students on here), and find it "cool" to drink - because everybody else is. they tend to be very impressionable (think of all of the kids that smoke in high school.. same thing) i know a lot of people that go out to drink with friends, and they don't even like the taste of beer/alcohol! It's just a phase - most people grow out of it after college, when they are forced to get up every day and go to work and support themselves. (that's what I think anyway)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sometimes I wonder if there was less drinking on campuses when the drinking age was 18!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The US drinking age started being raised to 21 years old throughout the 1970's. However, before that time, it was quite simply another era as far as social norms are concerned. I think it's a poor reflection on the state of humanity if kids are more likely to get drunk just because they're actually too young to legally be doing it.</p>
<p>I remember once last year I went out to lunch with a professor of mine and she strongly rebuked me for ostracizing myself from the rest of my peers. I was baffled. How did I manage to do that? Because I don't drink....and I had never even brought that up with anyone...</p>
<p>but I suppose it quickly gets noticed. As a college student, the jeers received for ordering Sprite in a bar do get pretty tiresome, but not nearly as troubling as the difficulty it can sometimes be to be socially with other students and not be surrounded by drinks or drunks.</p>
<p>i recall an editorial in the NYTimes last year, from a former dean at Middlebury College, which spoke to the issue of the increased drinking age actually causing more drinking problems at the school. He suggested that college is a place for young people to try on behaviors in a supervised atmosphere. But instead of letting them drink on campus, they are forced off, where they have to first break the law to get a drink-and then tend to drink in a hurry (before going home or to an on campus party) and then drive back after drinking. Some of these issues were addressed in this article about the northwestern frats. I'm not sure what to think.</p>
<p>It took me a few days to read this article, and while I was reading it, it sat on the kitchen table and my (sophomore at Reed) D also read it. Her comment: "I'm really glad I'm at a school with no frats; I just don't get the whole frat thing." But then she went on: "do people really think that saying it's dry will MAKE it be dry? College students drink."</p>
<p>This led into a long discussion about alcohol as a social lubricant, something my son has also mentioned. Since my husband's mother was a bipolar alcoholic, my kids are extremely aware of the dangers of alcohol. But both of them came down on the side of more freedom rather than less, and a return to the 18-year-old drinking age. Both also pointed out that their friends who are in Iraq are not allowed to drink, but are allowed to carry guns and kill someone.... (From there we left the topic of alcohol and went into a discussion of the politics of Vietnam compared to those of Iraq.)</p>
<p>How long are we (as a society) going to indulge the hypocrisy that drinking on college campuses should be stopped, while effectively allowing it to continue?</p>
<p>Me, I'm for a national 19-year-old drinking age; it seems to work for Canada. (Around here, kids go to Vancouver (Canada) for summer weekends, just so they can go to clubs, drink, and dance.)</p>
<p>Sorry to intrude on the parent's forum, but my mom and I were talking about this last night (she wanted to talk about the article).</p>
<p>When I vist my friends from very strict households who are now freshman, I find that drinking to them is very new and so they'll go out and get trashed on the weekend, since it's not something they've done before. To me, that whole concept is kind of a waste and very much over (so sophmore year). I'm kind of glad that I've been exposed to partying in the NYC enviroment, so in college (where stuff starts to count more) I know I won't get distracted by those hard choices. I've already made those choices and learned how to recover from bad choices in a supportive enviroment (my high school friends and continued conversations with my parents). </p>
<p>My friends and I have been recently talking about what we plan to do in college and what we don't plan to do in college. Drinking has never come up. We mostly talk about drug use (which we are all against) and hooking up. I think the drinking age should be lowered so kids can experience alcohol at a time in their lives when they can come home to their parents and their parents can guide them through those choices while they are living at home. Speaking personally, it's make my experience easier. Again, sorry to intrude, but I found this thread really interesting.</p>
<p>fendergirl,
I hope you're correct about it being a phase. I say that because logic would assume that a prolonged 4-yr affair with alcohol could set the stage for adult alcoholism, if we're talking huge amounts here, because of the body developing tolerance.</p>
<p>I've always found the whole frat alcohol fixation amazing, because neither I nor a single one of my female friends in college were the least bit interested in dating such guys. Amounts of alcohol consumed did not "impress" us (except negatively); we found this activity to be immature. So this is all about impressing each other? And they need 4 yrs to show off? This must be equivalent to an athletic contest (i.e., physical endurance) -- which apparently is more important than attracting girls. Interesting priorities.</p>
<p>Hmmmm.</p>
<p>I'm actually of the opinion that the drinking age should be lowered to 19 and the driving age raised to 19. If I'm not mistaken, when the drinking age was raised, deaths from drunken driving declined, but my impression is that we had less binge drinking in the 70s, and fewer alcohol poisonings than seem to occur today. I would like to think that treating alcohol the way it is treated in Europe(that is parental supervision at an early age), would lead to more responsible drinking but I see some parents making alsohol available to their teens, particularly boys, in ways that are not responsible parental behavior, so who knows what the right answer is, I do know that kids going away from home for the first time tend to make some bad choices, and I think that is just human nature.</p>
<br>
<p>"my impression is that we had less binge drinking in the 70s, and fewer alcohol poisonings than seem to occur today."</p>
<br>
<p>That's because so many kids were smoking marijuana instead. Kids still do that, of course, but it seems like it's less mainstream than it was in the 70's and that kids are substituting alcohol instead. Frankly, I would rather see them smoke dope. They're much less likely to try to drive or to drive aggressively if they are stoned rather than drunk. (not to mention date-rape, bar fights, etc).</p>
<p>Skeptical, students are welcome in the Parents Forum. The forum is set up for issues of interest to parents, not exclusive participation by parents.</p>
<p>Cangel, I'm with you about parents responsibly introducing alcohol to children. We started offering our D a bit of wine with dinner when she was about 12-13, including a sip or two from our glasses when out. Now, sometimes she choose to have it, sometimes she doesn't, and either way it's no big deal. (Except if we're out and she decides not to, then TheMom and I settle for whatever's available in wine-by-the-glass as opposed to ordering a bottle.) Funniest thing that ever happened was a waiter coming up just as D had taken a sip of my chardonnay and was saying, "Pretty dry, a little bit oakey...." She was dead on and it just cracked the waiter up.</p>