Besides the required deliberation that I attended put on by the other group in our class, I was able to attend another one, this time regarding the party culture surrounding Penn State. A couple of my friends were moderating the discussion, and I was intrigued to see some of the solutions that my fellow students had about the party scene at our school. After attending, I realized that students have different thoughts on how our drinking habits should be handled and who should be held responsible.
The approaches all focused on what parties should do more to alter how students go about binge drinking on the weekends. The first approach focused on limiting alcohol access to minors, since many parties on campus cater to underclassmen. The discussion focused on how younger students may use older students to buy them alcohol, and how those older students should be held more responsible for the actions of the minors. Many students voiced concerns that access is generally very easy if you have a connection and money, which can be dangerous if these younger students are not careful. While more measures are being made to track how alcohol is purchased and where it ends up, stricter enforcement should be made to restrict minors from having access to alcohol.
The second approach focused on law enforcement altering their laws and cracking down on underage drinking. The discussion was focused on the current laws in place regarding underage drinking, and how the police can enforce these laws on the weekends. With a large campus population going out on the weekends, it would be impossible to crack down on every underage student. However, the students believed that law enforcement should be better educated to handle drunk students to ensure they don’t become reckless or violent. It appeared that many students were in favor of increasing the role of law enforcement towards these situations, but there was disagreement over whether individuals or groups of drunk students should be targeted by the police.
The third approach focused on the university having more sponsored events to pull students away from drinking on the weekends. The group mentioned that Late Night at the HUB was already in place for students that do not drink, but many students do not see it as a viable alternative to drinking on the weekends. The discussion had concerns that the university needed to provide more for students to turn them away from drinking, even if it is not the popular thing. Things like the university paying bars to close on State Patty’s were seen as effective to preventing drinking, but the university should put more measures in place to focus on fixing the drinking reputation on campus.
As I attended the deliberation, I thought that the recent KDR scandal seemed to bring about more opinions of stopping the drinking problem, but it appeared that they individuals began to go into territories of fixing fraternities instead of drinking. While I agree that KDR was unjustified and sickening in their actions, the drinking atmosphere should not be to blame. I also thought the deliberation focused on what groups should do to assist in the problem on campus, but they never directed the conversation towards personal responsibility. The focus on binge drinking is understandable, as many students that go to parties engage in this, but how light drinking among students should be handled. If the group was able to include this deliberation, I think that the solutions to the problem would have been stronger and more comprehensive, incorporating how any level of drinking could be addressed.
Overall, I thought the group’s deliberation went smoothly (although one instance did become heated and uncomfortable between two attendees), and they presented facts and possible solutions effectively. I was pleased to attend this deliberation, and it helped me to reevaluate my thoughts on how students can go about drinking on the weekends.