[James]

LEt me play Devil's advocate here for a second.

All of what you are saying is true if you are examining under age drinking as a social problem. Social problems often don't fit well within black and white definitions

Kappasig1 and Delta Alum, just to single out two people, are examining drinking as a legal problem. Legal problems are often very black and white, at least until you get to court.

From a legal perspective, you cannot educate people in how to responsibly break the law(an oxymoron) without creating liability for yourself.

As an example, I can't have a program to explain to you how to comport yourself while doing cocaine and heroin without leaving myself and my organization open to legal repercussions if something goes wrong somewhere.

When you say underage members will drink . . . the answer is maybe. Delta Alum and Kappasig1 seem to be moving in a direction that says: You want to violate the law and drink? Fine, we will expell you. The side effect should be that the fraternities eventually start drawing from populations that don't drink or rarely drink.

DeltaAlum and Kappasig1, if i am mistaking your meaning please correct me

As far as saying that faternities can't turn their backs on underages that drink . . . that is simply not true. If they want to they can.

Falling from Devil's advocate mode for a moment. I agree with you that drinking is a social issue, and that there are other approaches that can be taken. However, I am not sure that National Fraternity Officers as a whole have the necessary knowledge, background, or experience to make that viable.

Originally posted by ktsnake
I may be misinterpreting some people here, but I see calls for automatic consequences to actions. In my experience, seeing things in black and white is never the best way to go.

Underage members WILL drink. There is absolutely nothing you can do to control that. You can pass all the rules you want -- the best legislation in the world could not prevent it. This in my eyes is irrefutable.

The question is, what can you do to encourage personal responsability and discourage alcohol abuse? I am sure if you did the research there would be a direct correlation between alcohol ABUSE (defined as being drunk enough to do something that you would not normally do) and liability claims (I think I've read several reports proving that to be true).

I think one of the functions of a fraternity should be to teach its members how to be true men, gentlemen even. A "gentleman" knows that drinking to excess is wrong. Always.

Fraternities cannot simply turn their backs on reality and declare in the name of reduced liability "We will no longer condone alcohol use by members". They must realize that alcohol is always going to be part of college life and the absolute best way to deal with the situation is education rather than prohibition.

LHT
Kevin Taylor
MT 5
University of Central Oklahoma