In Drinking Wars, Students are Smarter than Schools. This latest campus tragedy comes at a time when, despite efforts by colleges to ban alcohol or educate students about its dangers, binge drinking continues to rise, according to the recentl released College Alcohol Study by the Harvard School of Public Health. I am not surprised. Every spring, I teach a course called Alcohol, Science and Society, and I have learned that students drink to belong, to have fun and to identify with the image promulgated in this country that to drink is to be youthful, sexy and successful.
Students study, play and life in a world insulated from the rest of society.
Still dependent, not yet considered adults, they may be among the most isolated of Americans. So they pursue with a vengeance membership in their peer group. From its start in the early 1970's, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism called for teaching responsible drinking to college students. During the Reagan years, the country shifted from education to prohibition. Since then, heavy-handed policies have prevailed, based on the view that it's a weak strategy to preach responsible drinking to a group that is largely under the legal drinking age.