Dudes did not buy girls drinks on my campus, but there were things like $5 pitchers of rum and coke or the $10 "shark bowl".

I was thinking of colleges where freshmen weren't allowed to have cars, almost everyone lives on campus, and is the kind of campus setting where everything was within walking distance. As far as the change with the 26th amendment and what lead up to it, i wasn't applying it to you as I didn't think you were that old ;)

I grew up in California and there were places that allowed alcohol and people under 21, but it involved bracelets, double carding, and it really wasn't that hard to get someone in a club or venue to buy alcohol for people underage. I never had a fake ID but went to clubs and bars for live music and I was so afraid of getting thrown out I never tried to get a drink or accepted one before I was 18.

However California also has exceptions to minors consuming liquor, one with parents/guardians if you're 18, and the other is with your spouse if you're 18+ and your spouse is 21. At 18 my boyfriend was 21, I am sure you can figure it out. One would only get in trouble for possession, not consumption or internal possession, so there was a lot of leniency if one wasn't drinking and driving. I often drank in restaurants with my parents and it was pretty normal in my cohort, our parents could drink at 18 and they figured they could cut us off and help us acquire a palate as well as responsible habits.

Is that just campus culture? I would have been so sad and broke if kindly gentleman had not purchased beverages for me in college and beyond. I have often accepted {depended upon} the kindness of strangers (specifically men). Out of college it happens in air ports and if I'm dining alone.

My husband used a fake ID all through med school since he started school at 17. He had a guy in his first year class that looked a little like him. The guy flunked out and gave him his ID to use. It was well used by the time my husband finally turned 21. It was funny when he would give the fake SSN instead of his own when you'd ask for his SSN. He would get confused since he'd drilled that info into his head in case he got questioned. He never once got questioned in the 4 years he used it, I guess probably because it was a real ID that some one let him have and not a manufactured card.

I think I've told this story before...when my older sister was in school in Monroe, LA, she went to Shreveport with friends her senior year for a nursing conference. They went out, and she lost her license somewhere along the way. She ended up getting a replacement, no big deal. Later that year, she got a job over the summer as a Nurse Tech at Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge. One of the nurses came up to her one day and tells her, "My daughter has your license." My sister was confused and asked her what she meant. She said that she had looked in her daughter's wallet and found my sister's license in her wallet. She asked her what she was doing with the license, and her daughter said she found it in Shreveport and had been using it as a fake ID. The mom confiscated it and gave it back to my sister. What are the odds?! That license traveled over 180 miles back to my sister.

Sharkbowl from Firehaus by any chance?

Michigan must have been one of the early adopters of the 21 year old drinking age because it was 1976 or 77 when it changed here. By the time I started college in '83, it had been 21 long enough that we didn't feel the outrage that people a few years older than us had felt. There was also no "in loco parentis" going on at my college so that wasn't a factor with us either.

The main differences I see in drinking behaviors now:
1) As others have said, with the advent of the internet and perhaps reality TV, everything is "out there" and almost everybody has a camera with them at all times on their phones. There was no way to do a mass communication such as the one this thread is about.
2) Binge drinking was not funny or cool. For one, we mostly drank beer because we could afford little else. Secondly, we didn't want to get so drunk that we didn't remember anything. There just seemed to be more moderation.. to get a little tipsy and maintain it was more the norm. Occasionally someone over did it, but we didn't have power hours or try to do 21 shots on our 21st birthday, etc. Doing shots was pretty rare in my college world.
3) We took care of each other. If someone was getting too drunk, we got them out of there before they were totally out of control. Perhaps it was my campus culture, but if anybody ever went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning, especially from the Greek system, we never heard about it. I really don't think it happened at all during my years in college.

Well, then as now that applied to some campuses and not to others.

Oh, bless you. :D No, I'm not that old -- not quite. My siblings, on the other hand . . . .

Anyway, FWIW, it was in 1984 that the federal government mandated the 21-year-old minimum age for purchasing and publicly consuming alcohol as a condition of receiving federal highway money.

Wow...we held out for a long time. Louisiana has always been ornery! :rolleyes:

Well, I was in Puritanny PA, so that really doesn't work. :) Unless you were near enough to drive to Ohio, NY or WV, you were screwed. Our chapter apparently had formals in the 1970s in NY state but they certainly weren't close enough that it was a regular thing.

I also told MC this - I think even though we were pretty young at the time it was happening, Vietnam sort of got into our brain and made many of us grow up with a degree of distrust of authority. If that didn't do it, SNL did. :) That is pretty much gone today, from what I hear/see.

And I agree with Dee, we never tried to do the 21 shots on our 21st. I don't think that's a generational thing though...a few years after I graduated it was the big thing...I think it filtered down from Penn State.

Indeed. "Never trust anyone over 30."

For comparison, I was in school from 1991-95. Not quite the 80s, but definitely not kids of today. AGDee's experience rang true with mine.

This was exactly the case on my campus. Plus, tipsy is more fun.

I don't remember ANYONE doing this. Shots, yes. Shots on your 21st? Definitely. Doing 21 of them? Not a chance.

I can't remember anyone going to the hospital either, and I lived in our house, which was part of the entire Greek Village, for 2 years. Yes, students passed out from drinking. But either no one drank to the extent of needing to go to the hospital, OR as has been said throughout the thread.. we had the common sense to keep it quiet.