<p>I agree with you, but I think that the reason why colleges are asked to take on those roles is because they hold themselves out as guardians at times. If my employer had an Honor Code that I had to sign that contained rules on my personal lifestyle (not just professional ethics and public behavior, but personal lives), that would affect my relationship with them. If my employer required that I live on housing owned and operated by them, that would affect my relationship with them too. Colleges attempt to exert a high level of control over their students so it’s natural that parents – without meaning to – may start to see the college as having some kind of supervisory role over the student.</p>
<p>Binge drinking is scarcity behavior. Fewer 18-year-olds would do this if they could buy alcohol legally in public settings. There is no point, for most, in getting blind drunk in open communal environments. The current drinking laws encourage binging and “pre-gaming” among the 18-20 set, with poor results.</p>
<p>A better approach would be huge social stigma against drunk driving, and commonly accepted practices (call a cab, have a designated driver or key keeper) to prevent it. Scandinavian countries have incredibly harsh drunk driving laws (and they like their booze). We should take a page from their book.</p>
<p>Perhaps also a factor is that the “residential college experience” is considered desirable. A college that offers that then gets pulled into “home life” issues like drinking when it provides things like dorms, encourages on-campus social activities, and extends recognition to fraternities and sororities.</p>
<p>If a college stuck strictly to providing education and stayed out of other aspects of the students’ lives (i.e. no dorms, no food service, no on-campus activities other than academic-related, no recognition of fraternities and sororities), then drinking-related troubles that students get into may be less likely to be viewed as the school’s fault or responsibility to prevent. But such a school (like many commuter schools) tends to be seen as undesirable by most around here.</p>
<p>I do think that any culture that demonizes alcohol paradoxically ends up with more problems with excess among those who do drink. We are a puritanical society in many ways: that results in some level of external control with a deeper level of pathology as behaviors need to be hidden.</p>
<p>I know kids who went through school programs in early elementary school who cried when their parents had a glass of wine at a holiday meal. These same kids had big problems when they had a “few beers” in high school.</p>
<p>I think as a culture we need to emphasize using alcohol for good, and educate kids on how to do that. And we need to address whatever deeper problems are driving young people to want to exit life for a few hours (or more) by getting blotto drunk.</p>
<p>I think MADD did a wonderful job of presuring all of us not to drink and drive and that for the most part has been inground into today’s kids. Where MADD failed, and how could they have known, that working to get the drinking age increased created a new deadly problem of ‘secret’ drinking. It’s pretty difficult to roll a keg or even cart 36 packs of beer from point A to B. Not difficult at all to put vodka in a pocket or backpack and get it from point A to point B. I wish like heck we would have come up with a different solution than raising the age. I do like part of Poet’s suggestion and lower the age back to 18 for beer (and possibly wine) and keep 21 the age for liquor. I absolutely believe that the vast majority of 18-20 years olds would “choose” a legal party with beer over a super-double-secret binge party with vodka. Education is absolutely a component but that has always been a part of growing up even when the age was 18 and legal to drink.</p>
<p>In no way do I think it’s the college’s responsibility of “managing” our kids’ drinking. No way. If anything I have always felt sympathy for them trying to sort out the 18 year olds from the 21 year olds. Impossible task. No matter what the drinking age colleges have had very little ability to regulate off campus housing. All that came of raising the drinking age was to give the colleges less ability to sort the freshman out from the seniors by driving the underage kids off campus. I suspect when the drinking age was 18 freshman and some sophomores tested their new found liberties by attending freshman hall parties and sticking closer to campus…now hoards of them go off campus seeking “the party” and those that had very restrictive high school years and never experimented are like sheep led to pasture or they are in their dorm rooms chugging cupcake vodka and Rumchata or whever the horrendous flavor of the year is til they are sick. </p>
<p>Excellent post, compmom. We are puritanical about sex, too, at the same time our entertainment industry and even mainstream fashion retailers seem to sexualize everything. The mixed messages don’t help anybody.</p>
<p>Kids are going to experiment, whether it’s in high school or college or later on. In a safe environment like a college campus, the risks can be pretty low if they don’t overdo it. My son participated in some of the party culture at his school the first few years but when I asked how it was going this fall he said, “I’m too old for that ****.” He recognizes, at the ripe old age of 20, that he will never achieve his academic/career goals or feel physically strong and healthy if he is hungover and unable to function.</p>
<p>I mentioned that on a different thread - that the kids’ attitude changes around 20. The thrill is gone, the hangovers cease to be fun and they simply have better things to do. The really horrendous issues of hospital worthy intoxication and even the sexual issues seem to be largely tilting toward those 18 and 19 year olds…and lest we forget we have those 17 year olds that accelerated their way through K-12. Technically in my state I’m breaking the law if I even give a kid a glass of wine on a holiday if they are under 21. Really silly IMO since the last thing I would ever do in life is send a kid into the freshman jungle without having even tasted a drop of alcohol or experienced what one single glass of wine can do to you. And my kids were all over 200 pounds and over 6 ft. tall by the time they were 18 so I had less to fear. Chances are all of them could put a 12 pack away in a long evening and while they sure couldn’t legally drive a car, they probably wouldn’t be staggering. An on-line BAC calculator says 12 beers over 4 hours in a 210 pound male yields a BAC of roughly .136. </p>
<p>That’s true. I don’t really feel sorry for the colleges though; they put together this system to make money. If every college decided to become like a community college, there would be nothing stopping them but they can forget about school spirit and alumni donations, and they’d probably have to give up on international students and students from out of state too for the most part.</p>
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<p>‘How could they have known’?? Heh, I guess they could have picked up a history book. They did great work, but let’s be honest – Americans have enough experience with prohibition to reasonably foresee the benefits and the drawbacks of that policy. Each of us might way them differently, but none of this stuff is particularly surprising and if people really didn’t think that at least some teenagers were going to binge-drink in secret after the drinking age was raised to 21 then they’re probably too naive to be making policy.</p>
<p>My sibling was at UofM when the age changed at midnight. Everyone under 21 was in the bars and at midnight. it began. Such insanity. One minute they can drink. The next minute they couldn’t without breaking the law… You can just imagine the scene…and thus it began. The super secret drinking culture. </p>
<p>Its more than just teaching about whether drugs and alcohol are good or bad but also about the confidence to say no when “everyone” else is imbibing, the ability to pick friends who aren’t going to ditch you are at frat party, the willingness to pursue personal interests that may not be “cool,” how to be safe when they do experiment…</p>
<p>@JHS: This is a nearly 10 year old report comparing the drinking culture at McGill University in Québec with American colleges. It was a qualitative study done by an American:</p>
Managing their popularity is more important to colleges than solving binge drinking. Any college that started EXPELLING underage students for drinking would see a substantial decrease in the number of applications. </p>
Even worse, you’d see a mass exodus to off-campus housing. That would increase the number of drunk students driving, and therefore injuries and fatalities. Not quite the hoped-for outcome.</p>
<p>^^ I don’t know that it would increase drunk driving as there is generally a hefty supply of off campus rentals well within walking distances of most American colleges, but it does nothing to curb drinking and if anything makes it easier without the eyes and ears of most RAs. And frankly most RAs are pretty lenient/tolerant up to a point. </p>
<p>^^ There are enough rental units now. What if 1000+ students suddenly leave campus, but still want to attend campus events? This is the situation in the town where I live. I hate driving anywhere when school is in session.</p>
<p>Still, it remains a hypothetical, and may vary from campus to campus.</p>
<p>The thing about comparing American students at McGill with American students at American colleges is that the McGill students chose to go there, knowing they weren’t going to an American sports factory. It’s not like they go to the football games but don’t drink beforehand. They don’t go to football games. They are not the same as the binge- drinking freshmen at American schools, who arrive at college planning to binge drink. This is comparing apples with oranges.</p>
<p>Au contraire. McGill is pretty popular here, and I know for a fact that kids go there expecting to drink. They do, however, seem to figure out fairly quickly that they don’t need to drink all the time.</p>
<p>I think being in a city with stuff to do off campus helps, too. There’s something to do other than drinking, and there’s actually a benefit to not being too drunk to get around efficiently.</p>
<p>Do they go there expecting to binge? If so, why aren’t they doing it? Different college culture? Are they getting a message that binge drinking isn’t the thing to do from students already there?</p>
<p>Agree with JHS. Most of the kids from my area who end up at McGill do so because they didn’t get into the elite US colleges they were aiming for. Given 3 choices: a CUNY, living at home; SUNY, usually SUNY Binghamton, and McGill, they choose McGill. They want to get away from home and “go away” to school, they think McGill is more prestigious than SUNY Bing, and, as City kids, Montreal is more appealing than Binghamton. </p>
<p>At least without merit $, McGill is a lot cheaper than OOS publics. </p>
<p>But then, NYC kids are rarely into football.</p>