Welcome to Freshman Year

Your college administration wants you (and more importantly, the media) to believe that the biggest issued faced by colleges today is alcohol abuse. We can only partially disagree, ’cause, shit, you and I both know that we’re drinking a fuck ton. But, even though it may seem like college kids are dying every night due to over consumption of alcohol, this is simply not the case. Sure, kids get drunk (and often schnockered-the-fuck-up beyond belief), but that’s inevitable when you give immature kids the availability of alcohol (and you can’t disagree that college students are immature–hell, I have the maturity level of a four year old most of the time. I crack up at farts and giving girls raspberries when we’re making out). Still, I guess it’s a problem.

So while university presidents and college town police forces are getting all up and arms about this, they’re trying to solve the problem all the wrong way. It seems like they’re throwing common sense to the wind, and cracking down on fraternities–the absolute wrong place to turn.

Dartmouth’s new policy allows for “undercover” agents to go into fraternities to see if they are serving beer to underage students. If the frats are found guilty of this “serious offense,” they can be fined up to $100,000. This is complete bullshit, and pins the blame for over-consumption on the wrong people.

Sure, at small liberal arts schools, the biggest party scene comes at fraternities. And sure, there’s a ton of free beer to be had at frats. But, frats are not the reason that kids are getting too drunk to function. But when you make it such a huge liability* for fraternities to serve beer at their parties, they will simply stop. And this might seem like a victory for administration and bureaucracy, it’s really just exacerbating the problem. Because when kids can’t drink to their hearts content at frats, they’re gonna do it in their dorms. And they’re going to do it heavily, with hard alcohol.

RumpRoast clearly isn't familiar with "how much is too much."

As a freshman, before you go out, you’re pre-gaming with the cheap vodka your friend’s brother’s frat brother bought for you. Since you’re venturing into uncharted territory, you’re probably gonna drink to excess. You’re not sure what you can drink at the party, so you take about six more shots than you think you’ll need, just in case. Gotta sustain that buzz, right? Half an hour later, you’re passed out in your bed with a trash bucket by your side and your friends hoping you don’t die.

The experience sucks, but after that you know you don’t need to pre-game hard to have fun at a college party. There’ll be beer there that you can use to keep the ball rolling. But when there is no beer at a party, inexperienced, underaged kids from freshman to senior, will just rip shots of shitty hard liquor in their rooms before going out. That’s just dangerous, and Greek leaders and students agree.

Now we’re not asking colleges to straight up allow drinking on campus, no matter how old you are. It’s not legal or feasible. But, cracking down excessively  on fraternities isn’t the answer either. What it comes down to is getting students to realize that drinking way to much isn’t that good of an idea, and you don’t need to get yourself alcohol poisoning to have a good time. However, you can’t accomplish this by punishing students who drink to the point of danger so much that their friends don’t want to call for help for fear of the repercussions.

Anyway, Dartmouth’s new policy sucks hard, and so do most colleges. Is there a sure-fire way we can deal with this problem? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t better ways to go about it than a black-or-which, right-or-wrong punishment. If your school does it right, does it wrong, or if you just have an opinion on the matter, sound off in the comments.

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*Here’s not to say that frats serving beer isn’t a liability in the first place. But speaking from experience, the likelihood of a kid getting wicked intoxicated at their house isn’t enough to stop a frat from serving. A $100,000 fine? That is.

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