Alcohol On College Campuses: Should It Be Outlawed?

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Last week, Washingtonian postedthis article on 24-year-old George Huguely and his fresh murder conviction after hegot hammered and decided that the best way to a woman’s heart was through her head(literally). I’m not here to write about that, because he got what he had coming tohim. Justice has been served.What interested me more was what he wrote in aletter to his victim: "Alcohol ruined mylife." In this case, is that true? In a way, yes. There is little doubt that without theeffects of the drink, Yeardley Love would probably still be alive and Huguely would stillbe a free-range asshole. But because the actions of a few undoubtedly reflect the beliefsof a demographic as a whole, the latest hot topic is once again the consumption of alcoholby underage drinkers.Personally, I’ve seen the effects of campusesattempting to crack down on alcohol use. Younger readers are probably dealing with itright now, and older readers are either unaware of the concept or wishing the drinking agewas raised to 35. What I can tell you is this: It doesn’t work. Banning alcohol on acollege campus only encourages drinkers to become more clever about their drinking. ButI’m not even talking about college or even underage drinking. Booze made collegebearable, and I continue to enjoy alcohol liberally (if not infinitely more responsibly)as a “real” adult. What I’m talking about is the seemingly unendingfervor that surrounds alcohol use in general.I don’t entirely understandthe backlash against underage drinking that tends to accompany a situation likeHuguely’s. I know that any tragedy like this one is typically followed by a rapidswing of the pendulum, even though rationally we realize that no amount of Monday morningquarterbacking is going to prevent something that already happened. But, still, it’shuman nature to want to fill in what we see as an obvious hole or gap in the system.That said, when we’re talking about something like collegiate drinking,it seems like an awfully tough sell to convince the public that underage drinking hasreached epidemic proportions, especially when it’s the same rhetoric every timesomething sad, destructive or tragic happens on campus as a result of over-imbibing. Theway I see it, there are two possibilities: One is that alcohol use, despite beingwell-documented as every coed’s favorite pastime for centuries, somehow found a wayto surreptitiously become the new scourge of otherwise innocent students, andadministrators are right to take drastic action. Two, and far more likely, is that whensomething tragic happens, it becomes clear to the taxpayers/donors that the administrationhas little control over what students do in the privacy of their own dorm rooms, so inorder to save face, they act as though the destructive actions of a few are a symptom of alarger epidemic.Alcohol gets the same treatment that a lot of "teen fads" getin the media. It reminds me of things like toad licking, bath salt smoking, eyeball vodkashooting, and rainbow parties. What all these so-called fads have in common is thatthey’re irresponsible, incredibly dangerous, and they don’t really happen. Ifthere were ever parties where girls took turns giving guys hummers wearing differentcolored lipsticks, I can guaran-goddamn-tee you that high school Ian and his friends wouldhave died of sleep deprivation trying to locate these parties. It turns out that as stupidas we can be as teenagers and young adults, we still maintain a reassuringly steadfastaversion to things that can so obviously kill or injure us.I don’t doubtthat college kids are drinking more on average than they were 40 years ago, andthere’s no arguing that extreme overindulgence can kill you. I remember a few guysthat ended up having to go to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped, but guess what?They didn’t make the same mistake twice. Yes, we’ve all done regrettablethings when we’ve had a few too many, but provided no one gets hurt, a littleself-induced embarrassment is part of growing up. It takes a special kind of person,however, to crush a person’s skull against a wall and blame it on alcohol. Alcohollowers inhibitions; what it doesn’t do it turn an otherwise healthy person into amurderous psychopath. Parents and administrators need to realize that underage bingedrinking isn’t the problem. The problem is emotionally unstable people who alsohappen to be underage binge drinkers.If there’s any solution to the“problem” of underage drinking, it’s to leave it alone. On the one hand,as a parent, you can’t tell your kids that it’s OK to break the rules and thenexpect them not to do so to excess when left unsupervised. Any parent who uses the excuseof “Oh, I’m just teaching them how to drink responsibly” is just someonewho wants to drink with their kids (find some drinking buddies, loser). On the other hand,vilifying alcohol and over-educating people isn’t any better, as there is such athing as fear of the unknown. I distinctly remember the only takeaway from those D.A.R.E.classes was a working knowledge of which drugs sounded fun and which ones would probablykill me.Banning booze on a college campus only penalizes the students whodrink somewhat responsibly, while forcing those determined to binge drink to findstealthier, more dangerous ways to do so. If anything, problems only become magnified,because on a campus where booze isn’t allowed, every drunk student is one who neededto drink so badly that the penalty was worth the risks.Never once has throwinga ton of adult attention at a problem made teen offenders act in the manner desired. Idon’t see why booze should be any different. Sadly, a few bad apples will always bearound to spoil the bunch. The solution, however, is almost never to torch the entireorchard. Continue Reading

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