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Alright...alright...so we agree to disagree....But let me state some background info for my posts:
1. Alcohol in and of itself is not evil. I imbibe often.
2. Yes, college students drink. I did.
3. My earlier posts was a response to someone else's comment that at least one of the Penn State sororities apparently believe that no other fraternity would want to attend a social/mixer with them unless alcohol is available. Presumably because it won't be fun.
4. I have seen chapters that are totally dysfunctional together when the alcohol isn't present (granted, this is not every single chapter. But I've seen this). Very few consistently show up to meetings or ritual, no one hangs out together...they literally don't know what to do with themselves at an event where alcohol isn't present. When they have to be at a "dry" event, they pregame beforehand. When you observed the overall situation, you could see that one common denominator there was alcohol. They became totally different people when it was present. It was kinda painful to watch. Sure...alcohol is a social lubricant and maybe each person in that chapter was so socially inept that's what they needed in order to interact with others. However, I don't think that just because "college students drink" (which is a fact that I'm not arguing) doesn't mean we can't continue to have conversations with them...encourage them to think outside the box...talk about alternatives...show them that they don't always need that "social lubricant"....give them tools to increase their social skills...teach them how to be responsible. When you are an educator or work with students you are always having these types of conversations. I thought we could have one of those here as well.
5. It's probably hard to understand where I'm coming from unless you have seen and experienced what I have...just like it's hard to understand where you're coming from because I haven't seen or experienced what you have.
6. And no matter what....no matter how many times people tell me "college students drink. If you can't deal with that, maybe you shouldn't be dealing with them"...I refuse to dismiss the fact that FOUR college students from my small school went to the hospital for alcohol poisioning from the same party on the same night simply by saying "college students drink". I can deal with college students drinking. I can't deal with them dying.
7. Honestly, (at least for my groups I work with) I wish that it was easier and cheaper to have Third Party Vendor events instead of BYOB. Third Party takes some of the pressure off of the chapters in regards to controlling/securing the alcohol, deciding when to cut people off, intervening safely with extremely drunk guests, security at doors, etc. I think chapters can have more fun at those types of events.
8. The "PsychTau" screename messed up and wouldn't let me log in (several months ago) and so I just went to "PsychTau2". However, I think one of my computers still has "PsychTau"
cookied because sometimes it shows up.
There's a lot more background information/observations I have made, but this would get entirely too long to type it all here. My opinions are based on my observations...not scientifically conducted research. They are also affected by the area of the US I have lived in. Had I lived/gone to school/worked somewhere else I'm sure I would have seen different things that would affect my opinions.
I WANT my students to enjoy college and have fun and drink if they want to. That's fine. BUT...I expect them to not be stupid and to keep themselves and each other safe. I'd rather have conversations about safe alcohol use with them than "micromanage" every event they have.
PsychTau
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