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[fiona]

Not good to know.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/09/drinking-again-forget-the-sats-how-many-days-was-your-kid-drunk-last-week/

The Fiona

[polly_mer]

I'm uncertain why this article was written.  Yep, many of my students are alcoholics.  Yep, they blow off class and classwork to drink the days away.  I've seen them drunk in the street because I live right next to the Greek houses and student ghettos (small towns are fun that way).  Our university president proudly sends around externally written articles as well as internally collected statistics on how much better things are since he's taken charge.  He has authorized money to hire a PR firm to fix our reputation as a party school because he has declared that we are not a party school.

I was a student at places where people worked hard and played hard (oh, the student pranks at an engineering school; oh, what we learned from figuring out how to get that toilet on top of the library under cover of darkness).  This isn't one of those schools.  These students don't even play all that hard; they just sit on their front porches and drink or drive three hours "home" for the weekend that starts Wednesday and apparently also ends Wednesday.  Yep, many of my students are failing at partying as well as academic work.

[zharkov]

I've worked at a couple of places where undergrads had a so-called Thirsty Thursday tradition, meaning many would get hammered on that night, which, as you'd expect, made teaching Friday morning classes a challenge.

I suspect the problem is worse when students (especially upperclassmen) are given apartment-style accommodations, as there are few to no RAs and adults keeping an eye on the possibilities of mischief. 

[lizzy]

During times of frustration (9am classes on Friday, for instance), this kind of thing helps me to remember that students' priorities do not always align with those of the university. Not much I can do about that.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that there are moments (lots of them, in some cases) in which I care more about their work than they do.

[archman]

I have a possibly naive view that the economic recession will foster a new generation of more responsible students in our classrooms.

I am also aware of the recent report in my state that 9% of the population takes illegal drugs. I guess that makes us a big "party state". Dang.

[chaosbydesign]

I suspect the problem is worse when students (especially upperclassmen) are given apartment-style accommodations, as there are few to no RAs and adults keeping an eye on the possibilities of mischief. 

But students are adults.

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think that the drinking age in the US contributes to irresponsible drinking in undergraduates. Because it is illegal for the majority of undergraduates to drink, it becomes an attractive thing for them to do; their main exposure to alcohol is likely to be at parties where people are getting trashed on cheap crappy alcohol, as opposed to in a bar/pub/restaurant drinking responsibly with a couple of friends.

[aandsdean]

I suspect the problem is worse when students (especially upperclassmen) are given apartment-style accommodations, as there are few to no RAs and adults keeping an eye on the possibilities of mischief. 

But students are adults.

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think that the drinking age in the US contributes to irresponsible drinking in undergraduates. Because it is illegal for the majority of undergraduates to drink, it becomes an attractive thing for them to do; their main exposure to alcohol is likely to be at parties where people are getting trashed on cheap crappy alcohol, as opposed to in a bar/pub/restaurant drinking responsibly with a couple of friends.

It may be an unpopular opinion, but an awfully large number of respectable student-affairs professionals share it, albeit quietly, along with a fair number of scholars of substance abuse.

I worked in Iowa when the drinking age was phasing from 18 to 21 (this was the early 90s)--people who were 18 when the law changed were grandfathered on wine and beer, if I recall correctly, and so there were three years where people below 21 could still buy these and get them in bars.

All the small private colleges in Iowa--except the ones with a religious mission that prohibits the consumption of alcohol (or, for that matter, admitting that such a thing exists)--were strongly against the change in drinking age for the reasons CBD suggests.  In a rural state, driving drinking off campus was thought likely to lead to a dramatic increase in accidents on dark rural roads in the deep of winter.  I do not know if the data have borne that out, but given my experience I would be surprised indeed if they have not.

[concordancia]

The whole students in a apartments thing would also work better if they weren't just student housing run as apartments. Apartments have mixed populations, apartments within a mile or two of campus are usually overpriced for the local working class and so overwhelmingly populated with students. Someone who has to be at work at 8am is more likely to call the cops for a disturbance than someone who is in your 11am class with you.

At my current institution, the town has made the situation even more concentrated than usual with extremely strict rules about how many non related people can share a house. Actually, there seems to be some debate about where the rule originated - to stop groups of migrant workers from sharing a house in a residential area or groups of students, but it works on both.

[drspouse]

I also think that the legal drinking age can't help, but I have to say we have our fair share of "only has fun when drunk" students over on this side of the pond (where the legal drinking age is 5, and the legal buying age is 18).

It does not help that our campus has a reputation as "sporty" and the sports teams and other student clubs advertise themselves as "having lots of fun and getting smashed" all the time. So the students who come to our university are those who are attracted by the idea of getting smashed.

[larryc]

Back when I was a student, dag nabbit, we had a kegger every night! We Knew how to DRINK back then, not like these lazy kids today with their wine coolers and flavored vodkas. The world is going to hell in a hand basket I tell you.

[prytania3]

Back when I was a student, dag nabbit, we had a kegger every night! We Knew how to DRINK back then, not like these lazy kids today with their wine coolers and flavored vodkas. The world is going to hell in a hand basket I tell you.

I once went on a tequila binge. Now the very sight of tequila makes me...let's just say we don't mix.

[marigolds]

I suspect the problem is worse when students (especially upperclassmen) are given apartment-style accommodations, as there are few to no RAs and adults keeping an eye on the possibilities of mischief. 

But students are adults.

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think that the drinking age in the US contributes to irresponsible drinking in undergraduates. Because it is illegal for the majority of undergraduates to drink, it becomes an attractive thing for them to do; their main exposure to alcohol is likely to be at parties where people are getting trashed on cheap crappy alcohol, as opposed to in a bar/pub/restaurant drinking responsibly with a couple of friends.

It may be an unpopular opinion, but an awfully large number of respectable student-affairs professionals share it, albeit quietly, along with a fair number of scholars of substance abuse.

I worked in Iowa when the drinking age was phasing from 18 to 21 (this was the early 90s)--people who were 18 when the law changed were grandfathered on wine and beer, if I recall correctly, and so there were three years where people below 21 could still buy these and get them in bars.

All the small private colleges in Iowa--except the ones with a religious mission that prohibits the consumption of alcohol (or, for that matter, admitting that such a thing exists)--were strongly against the change in drinking age for the reasons CBD suggests.  In a rural state, driving drinking off campus was thought likely to lead to a dramatic increase in accidents on dark rural roads in the deep of winter.  I do not know if the data have borne that out, but given my experience I would be surprised indeed if they have not.

Would this generalize to actually teaching one's kids (and modeling for them) healthy drinking patterns?  Some families I've known have started to let their kids have watered wine with dinner at about 14, and allowed them to drink a couple of glasses of wine with dinner at home after they turned 18.  Is this a way to help some kids avoid the binge-drinking pattern of many undergraduate institutions?

I'm at a big Southern R1, so we have a long and proud history of drunkenness on this campus. 

[dr_alcott]

Would this generalize to actually teaching one's kids (and modeling for them) healthy drinking patterns?  Some families I've known have started to let their kids have watered wine with dinner at about 14, and allowed them to drink a couple of glasses of wine with dinner at home after they turned 18.  Is this a way to help some kids avoid the binge-drinking pattern of many undergraduate institutions?

I'm at a big Southern R1, so we have a long and proud history of drunkenness on this campus. 

My mom forbade alcohol in the house when I was growing up. (That all changed when my dad's doctor convinced her that having a drink or two each night would be good for them). In high school, I hung around the Good Crowd. So I never really saw responsible drinking. And then I went to college and drank like a fish. I'm extremely lucky I was never hurt or hospitalized. I'm convinced that I would have handled alcohol more responsibly if I'd known a little more about how grown-ups drink.

[kaysixteen]

Follow the fold and stray no more, stray no more, stray no more
Put down the bottle and we'll say no more
Follow follow the fold (before you take another swallow)....

ah the things one remembers from high school.

[navydad]

I suspect the problem is worse when students (especially upperclassmen) are given apartment-style accommodations, as there are few to no RAs and adults keeping an eye on the possibilities of mischief. 

But students are adults.

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think that the drinking age in the US contributes to irresponsible drinking in undergraduates. Because it is illegal for the majority of undergraduates to drink, it becomes an attractive thing for them to do; their main exposure to alcohol is likely to be at parties where people are getting trashed on cheap crappy alcohol, as opposed to in a bar/pub/restaurant drinking responsibly with a couple of friends.

I've heard this argument before, but it does not agree with my own experience. I started college at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Fall, 1970. The legal drinking age for beer was 18 at the time. There were beer bars (no wine or hard liquor) where 18 year-olds could drink, many of the student dining facilities on campus sold beer ($.50 per cup), and you could get a beer in the student union and sip it while enjoying the view of the lake. I can promise you this did not result in mature, responsible drinking. It just meant the freshmen could get drunk in the dining facility and then stumble back to their dorms. The guys who sold Coke at football games in Camp Randall Stadium were called "mix men" (figure it out).