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While that helps with mitigating drinking issues with one’s own kid, that won’t necessarily mitigate issues from one’s kid having to live in a campus environment affected by heavy drinking/partying culture such as noisy/belligerent dorm/classmates, vomit in dorm/campus areas, etc.
While some can live/tolerate being in such environments even if they themselves don’t take part, many others can’t or more importantly, feel it doesn’t fit into their personal envisioning of what their undergrad experience should be about.
There’s going to be parties at any school that there is, so chances are your kid is going to go to at least some of them. In my opinion, the trick to not having a party-crazy college freshman is to start introducing alcohol in controlled amounts while you’re around. This way you can make sure that his first introduction to drinking isn’t at some uncontrollable frat party where he can get into trouble, but in the safety of your home. I come from Switzerland where the drinking age is 16 and I’ve found that because of that, when kids get to college they are a lot less reckless in the parties and overall less interested in drinking until you black out, etc.
At large universities with major party reputations, there will ALWAYS be lots of students on each night of the week who are NOT drinking or using drugs. The larger schools offer more social groups, more “bodies” per social group, and more options overall. Sometimes, I think it is the very small LACs, with little in the way of weekend programming, some of which are located in communities with little going on off campus, that may present the greatest risk to vulnerable young adults.
I disagree with an earlier post that implied, basically, that kids are partiers or non-partiers before they get to college and will continue the same path they had in high school. This is an age at which these young adults are evolving and maturing. Some had more social exposure in high school than others. Some may have had an athlete identity in high school but not have that identity in college. MUCH is unknown about where each kid has come from, where he is going, and what will happen during this transition. And unfortunately, most parents of college students really don’t have a clue what our kids are really doing when they are far away in college, unless they get into serious trouble. Sometimes our kids are making “responsible” choices and sometimes they are just plain lucky.
I also agree to a certain extent with the notion that those who drank a little in high school almost have an advantage when they get to college, as compared with others who never drank in high school. There’s something to be said for having had enough experience to know how alcohol affects one’s body and how it affects one’s judgement. I just don’t have a clue about HOW to go about providing that experience!
This is very YMMV as some who drank in HS may still not have enough experience or worse, care to pay enough attention to know when they’ve had too much.
One is a friend who ended up being the only one in his immediate or extended family without an exceedingly high alcohol tolerance*. And his low tolerance continues to this day despite the fact he drank in HS.
Another is an older cousin who came to the brink of flunking out multiple times because he prioritized beer/partying too much at a Big-10 school known for partying.
In contrast, neither of his sisters drank before college, had no such issues with drinking during undergrad, and graduated with flying colors/honors…and one of them attended another Big-10 school known for partying AND was a senior officer of her sorority.
Granted, she could tolerate being on a campus culture with heavy drinking/partying…but not every non-drinking/partying student can live with/around such students.
In contrast, I was a practical teetotaler in HS and most of college due largely to having grown up in a former working-class NYC neighborhood with a visible population of drug(crack/heroin) and alcohol addicts on local streets and park which ended up making alcohol and drugs a major turn-off for me and many elementary school classmates who didn’t want to end up like them.
It wasn’t until I was out of college that I started drinking enough to discover my alcohol tolerance and found it was much higher than I had thought.
- Rest of his immediate/extended family could drink several 6 packs of strong beer(8% alcohol or higher) and still be seemingly stone cold sober whereas he'd be woozy and on the floor from a half-can of Bud light. Made him the subject of family jokes.