You know, penny pitcher nights aside, I suspect the cost of getting drunk at a bar combined with the lack of "Jungle Juice" made with Everclear makes bars somewhat safer.

I would think it's more the presence of bartenders and (if they are allowing underagers to drink or being lax in IDing) quickly putting the kibosh on anything/throwing out anyone that might get them busted. Trust me, there are some bar concoctions out there that go on special that make everclear seem like water (our one bar had one called Rocket Fuel that lived up to its name).

One of my friends is in her early 30s, was Greek, and told me she NEVER drank beer in college, always mixed drinks. I cannot fathom this. Obviously (at least some) college students have money to blow on hard alcohol on a regular basis.

I never drank beer, only mixed drinks - but I'm not a big drinker, and I went to a school where there was little chance of having to buy my own drinks anyway. (All you girls going to schools with majority female populations are completely missing out.) :)

Thanks to Ladies Nights and idiot college boys lol

ETA: DSTRen13 types faster

Did I mention she was still, um, pure through most of college? I'm sure that's the cherry on the sundae (no pun).

"Girl, I just wanna talk. Let me get you this drink so we can get to know each other."

Idiot college boys lol

I don't think anybody said kids haven't always been just as scandalous. They were saying it was kept quieter before the internet.

My experience is that it's not just that the internet, email and the like make things more permanent these days. It's that kids today have grown up in a culture where so much more is shared than was the case in the past. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence drawn mostly from my own experience, and I'm not a "kids-these-days" head-shaker type. But I agree with 33girl -- in my experience, kids were generally better about keeping things under the radar. People knew what could get them in trouble, so they tended to be careful about who they told things too.

When a lot of us are making mention of kids now and kids before, there are quite a few things that are different and make the comparison difficult if not impossible. Many states did not raise the legal drinking age to 21 until the late 1980s (or 1990s if you're Louisiana with Frenchy Napoleonic Laws) so the parents of kids these days could often drink at 18 when they entered college. Perhaps some of that attitude or behavior has crossed the generation, and we all know of parents who are now held liable or responsible for buying alcohol for their minor children & children's friends. I know my parents were able to drink wine and beer before 21, but hard alcohol was 21+ and that state still has strange liquor laws, and many other states have those as well (Kevin, I'm looking at you and your warm beer for sale).

The change in the 1960s and 1970s is partially related to the large population of young people, the Vietnam War and the draft, and also the 26th Amendment changing voting from 21 to 18. Drinking and driving, hell seat belts, weren't prevalent like now, and people lived in areas where they didn't rely upon, nor own cars like now. Colleges were still allowed a vast amount of in loco parentis and women were often locked in at night.

It is now a different time and era, and sure, kids still do dumb stuff, but we hear about it a lot faster due to technology and the 24 hour news cycle. Self publication with social media gets it out there as well, and it is much harder for someone to have their parents (or others) sweep something under the rug. It is a lot easier to get caught when mug shots are online, the court record is online and searchable, and people put it on facebook with a quickness.

The method I have found useful with collegians and undergraduates is making the legal, economic, and long term ramifications of being caught for their actions clear. They can't say "I didn't know" or "no one told me" when it hits the fan. Criminal issues regarding drugs and alcohol can prevent them from holding jobs, Greek membership, living on campus, financial aid, driving privileges, being in school, and cost an obscene amount economically and emotionally. I've found that putting it in black and white has deterred some, some just don't get it, and others are hard cases who need to learn a lesson and perhaps need a treatment program.

Not my experience at all, except perhaps for the use of seat belts.

You're right that the drinking age was different -- we could buy beer and wine at 18. (And we were getting beer and liquor in high school.) But I still think the main difference is cultural. The prevalent culture then -- in my experience -- was to keep things quiet as best you could. As you say, perhaps this was due in part to schools acting more in loco parentis.

That would be 1995 for Louisiana. I was 20 years old when the drinking age was forced to 21 when the federal government said do it or we take away your highway funds. All the bars were convinced that everyone between 18 and 21 was "grandfathered in" for about a year until they really started enforcing the law, so I never really was effected by the law. I did start school at 17 so I used a fake ID once to get into a bar.:eek:

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.