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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.
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