<p>@marbles44: Your initial post generalized and created some possible misconceptions. Not sure if you are a student, or a parent, or a passerby on here, but maybe you (or your child) are among the student type who do spend every night in a room drinking instead of contributing to the campus. Regardless, in terms of logical rigor I thought your comments were off-base. I’m a junior at BC, and I can say from having visited friends on a bunch of other campuses both during the week and during weekends, that BC is no different from most college campuses. In terms of drug use, it is actually much tamer, and in terms of alcohol use, I see little difference. Of course I, like you, am basing it on my own little view, but I guess the point is that there is no generalization that can be made. </p>
<p>BC is a campus where more than half of the students probably have the occasional drink, mainly on the weekends; many students don’t drink at all and find NO pressure to start, and some are complete drunks who are in fact wasting their time and money and mostly hang around with other drunks. But the problem is not a week-long widespread problem, and the extent to which students do the wrong thing is not out of alignment with other colleges. To be sure, leaving for college does set some kids adrift…The opportunity to imbibe every night of the week (or smoke pot every night of the week, or go out to clubs every night, or have sex every night, or play XBox until 2AM every night, or order nothing but bacon pizza every night…) is typical of college for some number of students who lack the maturity to apply balance to their life. </p>
<p>When it comes to disciplinary action, BC happens to be more strict than the average – and more likely to recognize and address such issues – for two reasons: (1) It has the “rep” for partying, driven in large part (in my opinion) by the tailgate scene at football games where alums contribute to this in irresponsible ways by allowing some students to get drunk at their tailgate sites, and (2) as a Catholic university it feels the need to retain some semblence of restraint & propriety, whether for PR reasons or for student welfare, or for both. Painting this with a wide brush as you did can end up making some thinnk that the behavior is the norm for the campus, when in fact most BC students would agree it is not. Work hard, play hard is the way most BC students approach their time on campus. </p>
<p>As an aside, regarding probationary actions, a student at BC can get writtten up for simply being “in the presence of <insert forbidden=”" substance="" or="" activity="" here="">", so the quantity or percentage of students who have probationary actions against them is misleading if one wishes to measure actual drinking. My girlfriend got probation last year and she has never had a drink in her life. She just happened to be in a dorm room where 5 girls were drinking beers and 3 were not. All 8 got writtten up.</insert></p>