Hard core Risk Management peeps
 

All our Hard core Risk Management peeps should take a look at Wednesday's (1/25) USA Today.

There's a huge article about campus deaths, including some unknown details on the Chi Psi - Colo death.

One interesting note: UVa surveyed and found that the average bedtime for students was 2:31 a.m., so they started keeping libraries, cafeterias, coffee shops on campus open so people would have a non-alcoholic place to go.

"Many deadly decisions are made by underdeveloped brains, experts say. Research has shown that "the brain continues to develop after 18," says Denis McCarthy, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher. "We used to think it was done. But a lot of the areas that are still developing have to do with making judgment calls."

--USA Today, January 25, 2006

Contributing: Tom Ankner, Tristan Coffelt, Ruth Fogle, Breanne Gilpatrick, Mark Hannan Jr., Ray Hicks, Rachel Hollon, Kate Holloway, Ji Hyun Lee, Mary Beth Marklein, Marissa Newhall, Susan O'Brian and Karen Stephanites


There's some good, and some scary and disturbing information here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hs-cover_x.htm

College students think they're really adults and on top of things...

Not always.

Good article. Thanks for the Post.

The solution is simple -- either teach kids the skills they need so they can go to college and survive, or keep them locked away at home until their brains are developed.

Well, maybe the second makes sense. My Sophomore or Junior English Prof -- a really good teacher -- once told us that the only real reason for college, as it was then, was to keep some of us out of the job market for four years.

He thought that everyone should be required to go out and work, do military service (not a popular thought in 1968 or so), or be in some kind of national service like the Peace Corps.

After that time, he said, we would have more maturity, better time management skills and maybe even an idea of what we wanted to be when we grew up.

We all wrote that off -- but it made an impression on me at least.

Who knows, maybe he was right.

ETA: You can "teach" kids until you're blue in the face, but if they aren't mature enough to make good decisions -- which is really the important point in the study for me -- it really won't help.

That is spoken as a father who had three kids who managed to live through their teens -- somewhat surprisingly in one case.

DeltAlum, You think You can teach Your Kids until You are blue in the face but never really know them!

I agree with the fact that 18 year old people are presumed to be Adults but, are they. Their Brain is Still growing, well, I never figured out when the brain does not still grow.

Kids leave the Nest and parental I told You to do it this way. They are on their own for the first time and Know They Know Best.

We have all gone through this stage havent We? Hell, I was in a poor family money wise, but good parents never the less and worked starting at a very young age. Never cut grass or threw newspapers, I mean a job.

Todays give me generation have a lot less direction than we did in the 40-50s than the 80-90s.

At 18 when I went to College, I thought I was grown up and worked hard to do what I was taught, but there are a lot of distractions when away from home and those that say A No!

While We have Young Semi Adults who join GLOs, the idea is for the Older Students (19-21) to give the direction that is need ed. If it is not there, then they do get into trouble and We suddenly have the Risk Management Problems that We as Greeks Have!:confused:

How about letting the kids weed themselves out?

If you are dumb enough to try and climb on top of a roof after drinking a fifth of liquor....well, perhaps it is better for us all when you fall.

I don't think we should sue frats and sororities for that sort of thing. I say celebrate because they are culling the human race of the stupid.

I would wager a lot of people out of college die of stupider things than getting blackout and falling off a roof. Google search the Darwin Awards.

go tell that to the kids parents you moron. "no ma'am i didn't feel like stopping him because i thought his stupidity induced death would help society."

I might not have said it in quite this way, but concur with the message.

That certainly is the truth.

No offense to your professor, DeltAlum, but his way of looking at things is pretty naive. I have friends in the military, and they have their own problems with maturity -- they have trouble relating to people in adult ways or making adult decisions because they spent four years doing exactly what they were told, a lot of them struggle with immediate gratification versus what would be beneficial in the long-term because, for a while, they were in a situation where they HAD to focus on the short-term. The military breeds its own problems with emotional maturity. (And I say that with love because a lot of these people are still really good kids -- but that's the problem; most of them are still just KIDS even at 23 or 24.) I also work with a lot of people who went straight into the work world before college or instead of it, and as a rule, they aren't any more mature than their college counterparts. Those kids in the military and those who spent the years from 18-22 working are still just as dumb as the kids in college, and they're drinking, doing drugs, and doing stupid stuff just as often.

I don't agree with you at all. yeah. there are kids that are going to be people that drink and do drugs, shit i'm guilty, but you will never convince me that people who have served in any kind of combat divison for multiple years lacks maturity in any way shape of form. I know people that are my age, 21, that are in the special forces, army rangers, and the marines.....and they are all light years ahead of me or any of my friends in terms of emotions, maturity, and ability to make right decisions. They are the most mature people I have ever met in my life.

You're saying people who have been in combat. She's saying people who have been in the military in general. There's a difference.

Served in a combat division, not in combat :)

-Rudey

So in other words he is saying if you trained in a combat division but perhaps never saw actual combat with an enemy? In that case, I even more totally back what Heather said.

Ehh, most of the people I know who have been in the military have also been in combat, so I guess I wasn't making a huge distinction.

I guess it depends on how you define maturity. If you define it as being able to accept orders, shut up when you disagree with someone in authority, work hard, stop whining, etc. -- then sure, people in the military are generally more mature than the population at large. But when it comes to making rational, well-thought-out personal decisions, or balancing their short-term wants against long-term needs, or relating to people who aren't carrying guns (heh -- kidding, sort of), or evaluating risky behaviors, or many things beyond what I've mentioned -- they often fall short of their non-military counterparts. Let's face it -- the military doesn't prepare you for "the real world." That's not their job. Their job is to prepare you for war. And sometimes the skills for the real world and the skills for war can be the same -- discipline, for example -- but just as often, they contradict each other. Most of the people I knew who served in the military were pretty mature in terms of their professional/academic lives, but when it came to their emotional/personal lives and thought processes, there were some developmental issues. Nothing about the army would stop them from, say, thinking it was a good idea to drink a handle of vodka and falling out a window. They would probably be better than I am at sitting down and forcing themselves to write a paper, though . . . haha.

I've had a couple conversations with one of the guys that I'm closest to, and it struck me how many drugs he and the guys in his unit (is that what it's called? I don't know military terminology) were putting into their systems at some points in Iraq just to cope with the reality of the situation they were in. Maybe they were the exception and not the rule, but I find it hard to believe that it's THAT rare. This same boy has displayed some definite PTSD symptoms from being in Iraq and, now that he's out of the military and into college, uses drugs and alcohol to self-medicate more than anyone else I know. He may not be the rule, but I've seen this pattern repeated enough times with other military friends and acquaintances to know that they aren't the exception, either.

I am sure he can speak for himself. But the people I knew with military training were much more mature. I mean maybe that girl knows a lot of military people who just happen to live in Madison who aren't mature, but that wasn't my experience. A lot of the places that recruit also take very well to anyone with that military background because of that maturity.

-Rudey

just because you are not seeing active combat does not mean that you are just sitting in the US on your ass doing nothing. More often than not troops will be strategically placed around the country in combat ready units at bases and aircraft carriers. If you are going to sit here and try to convince me that an 18 year kid with a drinking problem has the same maturity level as an officer or NCO in the army or marines, you are just being an idiot. We have been at war or in combat for the better part of the last 15 years, Gulf, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. I have a friend who is 21 years old and is in the special forces. He was in a platoon that were the very first to infiltrate Afghanistan, Baghdad, and Falujha. They were dropped by airplane behind enemy lines in groups of three. THREE. Can you honestly say that his maturity level is on par with a bunch of drunk college students. Shit, im the same age as the guy and I look up to him almost more than anyone.

You're taking a special circumstance. Of course someone in a position of authority is going to be more mature than your average kid -- he was put into a position of authority because he already WAS more mature and more capable of handling authority than his peers. You're also comparing someone who is much older and thus SHOULD be more mature with kids who are 20 or 22 (as I was referring to when addressing DeltAlum's example).

Am I saying that everyone in the military is immature? Obviously not. Am I saying that the average kid who goes into the military at 18 or 19 and comes out at 22 or 23 is probably going to be just as immature as a kid that goes into college at 18 or 19 and comes out at 22 or 23? Yeah, basically.


Apples and oranges. You're not even addressing my point.

And you have nothing to back up your point other than some unverifiable personal story about some unverifiable military friends.

-Rudey

Back to what people were saying about the weeding out...I disagree, in part. I think you should, as a friend, brother, sister, however you wanna look at it, aid and care for your friends when they're tanked and on the verge of doing something stupid. However, I do not feel it is your "responsibility" to look after them, but rather simply the correct thing to do. There has to be some amount of personal responsibility, and frankly I'm tired of hearing schools, parents, whoever, blame a person or fraternity for their child harming him/herself

Well said -- I agree.

It really bothers me when parents act like they're entitled to have schools and/or organizations finish raising their kids because they couldn't/didn't do it themselves. Of course your fraternity brothers (or whoever) should help you out if you mess up and have way too much to drink -- but parents should not DEMAND that or anything else, including ridiculous rules and regulations on campuses and in organizations.