Mixed Messages and Mixed Drinks
Time for some Sober Thought
Charles Johnson
Last Updated: 9/2/08 Section: Campus
With the cost of tuition rising faster than inflation or real income, you'd think college students would be more concerned about getting their minds filled, rather than emptying the kegs; but, tragically, this is not often the case. It's far time for some sober reflection on why. David Oxtoby, Pomona's president, thinks he knows the reason: education, paid for, of course, through more tuition dollars.
"There should be an opportunity for students to be educated about alcohol and right now we can't do it in good conscience. We have to tell students that it's illegal to drink but if you are going to drink this is how you should do it. That is a mixed message to send students," said Oxtoby to ABC News after signing a letter with one hundred other college presidents supporting lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.
Instead of mixed messages, Oxtoby wants us to get serious about our drinking policy. "The 21 year old age limit does not prevent binge drinking; it happens in campuses across the country, and I think if we were able to show responsible drinking and modeled responsible drinking and we educate students about it would be very beneficial for everybody."
In a statement in support of the proposal, Oxtoby said the following: "I support this initiative because it will allow our colleges to engage in real education of our students about responsible use of alcohol, as well as model moderate behavior. At present we are constrained only to talk about abstinence, since anything else is against the law. Treating college students as adults will help them to make more responsible decisions."
But is it really that students don't have good role models, or is it that the social conditions encourage overconsumption of alcohol in the first place?
At colleges, social context is everything and education must have incentives for students to learn the proper lessons. In classrooms, those are tests. The reason education will fail as a policy is that students don't drink to excess because they don't know their limits, but because they want to engage in behavior that would otherwise be frowned upon: if you drink too much and kiss that girl and it doesn't work out, well, hey, it was the booze and not you that did it all. There isn't much of a downside for misbehavior.
But of course in other occasions, there is a huge downside for drinking too much. People rarely attend church drunk or wander the streets drunk because most communities will send you to a night in jail. Social norms mostly enforce good behavior. No one likes to appear hungover at the workplace or be remembered as the office drunk.
This raises an interesting question: why is it that college, a place for learning, encourages the overconsumption of alcohol? Might it be that colleges seldom enforce their own rules?
Oxtoby didn't lay out why he stops with just legalizing alcohol for those under twenty-one. It's not an easy thing to do, of course, and would require serious political wrangling. It would seem much easier to encourage the federal government's DEA to decriminalize another drug, marijuana, which is legal in California for anyone with a prescription. But you don't see Oxtoby calling for loser marijuana laws, even though marijuana is a drug that doesn't do nearly the damage alcohol does to our college campuses. When was the last time you heard of someone being rushed to the hospital for smoking too much pot?
For students caught smoking marijuana, the penalties can be severe - federal financial aid is often withheld from students that have been caught smoking pot - and Pomona, rather than turning a blind eye, helps enforce those drug laws with gusto. According to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, in October of last year Pomona school officials called police after finding marijuana inside student Vinay Shah's dorm room in the 200 block of East Bonita Ave. The Student Life later reported that school officials had used a private investigator to smoke out the drugs on campus, tramping students' right to privacy in the process. One wonders what would happen if Pomona didn't reward another kind of law-breaking - illegal immigration - by giving illegal immigrants reduced tuition. Of course no such relief is provided for the international students who apply to Pomona College, most of whom must pay the full tuition to attend.
If Oxtoby were really serious about education or treating us like adults, he'd be in favor of all kinds of freedoms that Pomona currently obstructs. For instance, Pomona's current policy with respect to Army ROTC makes it difficult for families already making that tough decision by refusing to accept money from the military in protest of the Army's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. That policy message, unlike the drinking one, isn't hard to understand at all: Pomona students, it's not okay to defend your country.
However sincere Oxtoby may be in trying to overturn the current alcohol laws, the real reason he and the other presidents signed the petition is legal liability. Nowadays, when a child drinks himself into the emergency room or grave, the first thing many parents do is call their lawyer. In March of this year, the parents of a student at College of New Jersey sued after their son died from drinking too much. The same thing happened at Rider University in 2007 and at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2004.
In September of 2000, M.I.T. settled with the parents of freshman Scott Krueger for a whopping $4.75 million when he drank himself to death at a frat house in 1997. They also got an apology from the president of MIT who expressed sadness for "failing" Scott and his family. In truth, Scott failed all of them by not valuing himself and his education more. These lawsuits present a good argument for reducing the drinking age, but supportive college presidents should be straightforward about their motives.
In all this talk of lawyers, education, and lawsuits, the message becomes crystal clear: while most college students may not be old enough to crack a brew, they still can think for themselves and choose rationally. Colleges, recognizing that they can never truly police it all, should fight for liability reform and to be exempted from frivolous lawsuits over which they had little cause. After all, no one makes you drink. Given that the cost of tuition has so outpaced the value of what many students learn, Pomona should create disincentives for drinking. Pomona should increase tuition for students caught drinking underage. At the very least, those students who drink to excess should be the last ones to get their aid packages evaluated, with priority going toward students who have followed the rules.
When students fail breathalyzer tests, they ought to have to make a public apology for damages they cause and charges they accrue. Every time an ambulance arrives on campus, it isn't somewhere else where it may be more needed. And drunken misbehavior like that which occurred on Claremont McKenna's seniors night out on the town in which members of the Class of 2008 stole alcohol, defecated on buses, and broke property on a cruise line ought to be strictly punished. The individuals responsible should be held accountable rather than the whole class sent back home. Put simply, not everyone needs to be "educated" on how to be respectful.
But Oxtoby and others, quixotically hoping that the federal government will lower the drinking age, won't do much more than play the blame game. Now that's a sobering thought.
Charles Johnson is a sophomore at CMC and an assistant editor of the CI.
"There should be an opportunity for students to be educated about alcohol and right now we can't do it in good conscience. We have to tell students that it's illegal to drink but if you are going to drink this is how you should do it. That is a mixed message to send students," said Oxtoby to ABC News after signing a letter with one hundred other college presidents supporting lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.
Instead of mixed messages, Oxtoby wants us to get serious about our drinking policy. "The 21 year old age limit does not prevent binge drinking; it happens in campuses across the country, and I think if we were able to show responsible drinking and modeled responsible drinking and we educate students about it would be very beneficial for everybody."
In a statement in support of the proposal, Oxtoby said the following: "I support this initiative because it will allow our colleges to engage in real education of our students about responsible use of alcohol, as well as model moderate behavior. At present we are constrained only to talk about abstinence, since anything else is against the law. Treating college students as adults will help them to make more responsible decisions."
But is it really that students don't have good role models, or is it that the social conditions encourage overconsumption of alcohol in the first place?
At colleges, social context is everything and education must have incentives for students to learn the proper lessons. In classrooms, those are tests. The reason education will fail as a policy is that students don't drink to excess because they don't know their limits, but because they want to engage in behavior that would otherwise be frowned upon: if you drink too much and kiss that girl and it doesn't work out, well, hey, it was the booze and not you that did it all. There isn't much of a downside for misbehavior.
But of course in other occasions, there is a huge downside for drinking too much. People rarely attend church drunk or wander the streets drunk because most communities will send you to a night in jail. Social norms mostly enforce good behavior. No one likes to appear hungover at the workplace or be remembered as the office drunk.
This raises an interesting question: why is it that college, a place for learning, encourages the overconsumption of alcohol? Might it be that colleges seldom enforce their own rules?
Oxtoby didn't lay out why he stops with just legalizing alcohol for those under twenty-one. It's not an easy thing to do, of course, and would require serious political wrangling. It would seem much easier to encourage the federal government's DEA to decriminalize another drug, marijuana, which is legal in California for anyone with a prescription. But you don't see Oxtoby calling for loser marijuana laws, even though marijuana is a drug that doesn't do nearly the damage alcohol does to our college campuses. When was the last time you heard of someone being rushed to the hospital for smoking too much pot?
For students caught smoking marijuana, the penalties can be severe - federal financial aid is often withheld from students that have been caught smoking pot - and Pomona, rather than turning a blind eye, helps enforce those drug laws with gusto. According to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, in October of last year Pomona school officials called police after finding marijuana inside student Vinay Shah's dorm room in the 200 block of East Bonita Ave. The Student Life later reported that school officials had used a private investigator to smoke out the drugs on campus, tramping students' right to privacy in the process. One wonders what would happen if Pomona didn't reward another kind of law-breaking - illegal immigration - by giving illegal immigrants reduced tuition. Of course no such relief is provided for the international students who apply to Pomona College, most of whom must pay the full tuition to attend.
If Oxtoby were really serious about education or treating us like adults, he'd be in favor of all kinds of freedoms that Pomona currently obstructs. For instance, Pomona's current policy with respect to Army ROTC makes it difficult for families already making that tough decision by refusing to accept money from the military in protest of the Army's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. That policy message, unlike the drinking one, isn't hard to understand at all: Pomona students, it's not okay to defend your country.
However sincere Oxtoby may be in trying to overturn the current alcohol laws, the real reason he and the other presidents signed the petition is legal liability. Nowadays, when a child drinks himself into the emergency room or grave, the first thing many parents do is call their lawyer. In March of this year, the parents of a student at College of New Jersey sued after their son died from drinking too much. The same thing happened at Rider University in 2007 and at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2004.
In September of 2000, M.I.T. settled with the parents of freshman Scott Krueger for a whopping $4.75 million when he drank himself to death at a frat house in 1997. They also got an apology from the president of MIT who expressed sadness for "failing" Scott and his family. In truth, Scott failed all of them by not valuing himself and his education more. These lawsuits present a good argument for reducing the drinking age, but supportive college presidents should be straightforward about their motives.
In all this talk of lawyers, education, and lawsuits, the message becomes crystal clear: while most college students may not be old enough to crack a brew, they still can think for themselves and choose rationally. Colleges, recognizing that they can never truly police it all, should fight for liability reform and to be exempted from frivolous lawsuits over which they had little cause. After all, no one makes you drink. Given that the cost of tuition has so outpaced the value of what many students learn, Pomona should create disincentives for drinking. Pomona should increase tuition for students caught drinking underage. At the very least, those students who drink to excess should be the last ones to get their aid packages evaluated, with priority going toward students who have followed the rules.
When students fail breathalyzer tests, they ought to have to make a public apology for damages they cause and charges they accrue. Every time an ambulance arrives on campus, it isn't somewhere else where it may be more needed. And drunken misbehavior like that which occurred on Claremont McKenna's seniors night out on the town in which members of the Class of 2008 stole alcohol, defecated on buses, and broke property on a cruise line ought to be strictly punished. The individuals responsible should be held accountable rather than the whole class sent back home. Put simply, not everyone needs to be "educated" on how to be respectful.
But Oxtoby and others, quixotically hoping that the federal government will lower the drinking age, won't do much more than play the blame game. Now that's a sobering thought.
Charles Johnson is a sophomore at CMC and an assistant editor of the CI.
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