This weekend I joined the 21 club.  Trying alcohol for the first time besides the wine from Eucharist was thrilling.  I have discussed before my views on Penn State’s binge drinking culture.  However, I think alcohol is treated like a taboo topic instead of put at the forefront of education.  When I moved in freshmen year I was told about all the risks of drinking and how I should abstain from alcohol until it was legal.  I think this approach is about as useful as abstinence based sex education.  How about we teach freshmen how to drink responsibly instead of trying to scare them out of it with the fear of underage citations, expensive fines, sexual assault and dying.  Penn State being a dry campus is not helping the situation.  Trying to brush all the drinking that happens anyway under the rug is not allowing people to see that drinking can be a socially, fun and appropriate activity.  If you are 21 and living on campus there is nothing wrong with having a beer in your dorm.  

I have two scenarios that exemplify the consequences of using fear tactics about drinking vs creating an environment where people do not abuse alcohol.  Friend A grew up in a household where she would never taste alcohol until she turned 21 and even then it was not highly encouraged.  Her parents had zero tolerance for underage drinking and kept an eye on the alcohol they stored in their cabinets.  Friend A now is a senior in high school and sneakily drinks at parties with her friends.  But if Friend A were to ever be in a situation where she felt unsafe she would be more likely to get in a car with a drunk friend then call her parents for help out of fear of getting in trouble.  Friend B grew up with a family that prioritized child’s safety over everything else and made it clear they wanted her to make safe and smart choices, but were not oblivious to the fact that teenagers often consume alcohol.  Friend B turned 18 and was allowed to have wine on family nights and whenever she was out at a party and felt unsafe she always had her parents come pick her and her friends up to bring them home.  Friend A and Friend B now have very different approaches to drinking in college.  Friend A now freed from the tyranny of where she grew up, binge drinks to the point of blacking out because she is not used to this new found freedom.  Friend B knows how to drink responsibly and still have a good time without putting herself in a situation of becoming obliterated.  

I pick up a lot of these Friend As in the ambulance every weekend on campus.  Girls and boys hysterically crying in the back of the ambulance that this underage is going to ruin their life and their parents are going to kill them.  I try really hard to always put things in perspective for these students.  Reassuring them that this is not the end of the world.  I always tell them this is a hiccup in their academic and collegiate career, nothing more.  Learn from it and move on.  Something needs to change with how we approach underage drinking because let’s be honest a majority of students here are doing it.  I am not in anyway excusing the action of the Beta boys this past spring in their role in Tim Piazza’s death, but I wonder if there was not such a fear of underage drinking would they have been more likely to call 911.  I know this was a case of hazing as well, but I am curious if the fear of citation was eliminated would Piazza be alive today.