Thanks, CF. That was my question.
Except in Michigan if it’s 4th degree, then it is a misdemeanor - but a high court misdemeanor. so basically a felony charge - potentially up to 2 years jail jail time and fine. I only point that out because parents should understand the laws IN THE STATE their kiddo attends college.
I am asking about the use of a date rape drug in general. Even if all you did was put the person to sleep and did nothing else.
Come on AWC. Colleges of course have no actual authority to regulate off campus bars. Although I frankly think a bar is a relatively safer/better place for young people to do their drinking. My high school Saturday nights were most often spent in a local tavern that kids from my HS could walk to to do their under 18 drinking, no fake IDs required. Much of my 18+ college drinking took place in the campus bar. So long as there was no driving involved, a very good system imo. But due to 21, today only a minority percentage of college drinking goes on in licensed establishments or sanctioned college events.
But Dartmouth and UVA are basically saying this. We know alcohol is illegal for you kids to have. We also know 80+% of you kids drink and the alcohol around here flows like water. So here’s how things will go from now on in terms of our priorities and enforcement. Wine and beer we are not going to sweat unless you give us some other reason to. Bottles of vodka we are going to persecute/prosecute like CRAZY. If we find vodka (but not beer) in your dorm or at your party, you are in big trouble with the school. By the way, we’ve asked the local PD to back us up on this. So your vodka will also get you tangled up with the cops. Party accordingly.
If properly executed (a big if) such a policy should make a great improvement in/around our campuses.
I hope any attempt by anybody to give a "date rape drug " would be punishable by law. But not sure how alcohol would ever be included when both men and women are drinking heavily in many instances. Yes, alcohol can loosen inhibitions but when you have grown men joking about that , how do you expect adolescents to figure all that out?
And I do support 18 year olds, college age kids, being able to drink beer and wine legally.
I kept my own name. It doesn’t matter whether it came from my mother or my father or elsewhere, it is MY NAME. Since birth. This whole thing of attempting to discredit women who keep their own names by saying, “But it’s your FATHER’s name!” is completely bogus, IMNSHO.
I use both no hyphen.
I actually kept my birth name as well, my father’s last name. My kids have their father’s last name but my oldest has my last name as his middle name. No hyphen either for me.
awc, there’s been plenty of litigation about deaths involving alcohol at colleges, and yet the drinking culture remains. If colleges aren’t liable when a kid dies of alcohol poisoning at a frat, or drinks too much and drowns in a creek, freezes to death or falls to his death, they’re not likely to be found liable for a drunken rape either.
@northwesty - I actually agree with your post, so I assume I did not explain or write clearly.
I am not saying that colleges, such as UVA and Darthmouth, should not do what they planning, as I agree that they should. They all should curb this behavior. And I also did not mean to imply that colleges can regulate businesses.
My point was there is an obvious a double standard in applying and enforcing underage drinking laws by municipal agencies, such as police departments. And I do believe a college can be challenged for allowing underage drinking if a parent or student thinks the drinking was the cause of an incident to their child, such as an assault. Similar to an establishment can be held liable for allowing underage drinking on its premises. And just because, up to this point, adults have looked the other way re drinking laws and colleges does not mean that will go on indefinitely, especially if drinking as seen as the cause of many issued.
Again, I totally agree with your post, but if I differ anywhere is that if such a case gets into play, I do not think that because PD looks the other way will be a viable defense for the colleges.
One of my younger kid’s friends died at 19 at college from falling off a balcony, partying and alcohol probably involved… They had played Little League together. My husband had coached them . This young man’s father was a doctor. His mother was the team mom on his LL team. I don’t believe they ever sued anybody and made note in the obituary their thanks to the EMS for trying to save their son. The visitation was heartbreaking. My husband broke down when we got into the car afterwards, very unlike him. I feel very lucky that my kids have gotten out of adolescence and college with only minor bumps along the way.
You have not a clue whether any of those cases were technically fought on the same grounds, so to use them as examples that colleges would be off the hook in the future is impossible to judge or even predict.
It could be similar to the tobacco cases where for a long time no one ever thought the tobacco companies would be found guilty of causing lung cancer because people smoked on their own accord, but it finally happened, then the dam broke in some respects.
Time will tell if this college situation continues unabated and a certain set of parents finally decides that enough is enough.
Oh, whatever, I stayed my maiden name for a long time, my boss hyphenated it, I later changed when we moved to a place I thought we should have the same on our id’s, for simplicity. The husband-father name comment was made by another friend, not me. My father had changed his surname, so mine was made up, anyway.
Btw, CA used to have a rule there could be no bars within a mile of campus- or something like that; at least I knew it held for UCLA. No idea if the law remains.
@northwesty I also agree with much of your post #5208 - but that is a far cry from banning all alcohol from campuses and having colleges lose all their federal funding if the ban is not enforced. That was what was suggested upthread and it just will never fly.
I am wondering if Dartmouth is trying to get the cooperation of the local liquor stores around the college. Maybe by asking them to require more than 1 ID for hard liquor or an actual drivers license which I think is harder to duplicate. That would go a long way in keeping the liquor out of the hands of underage students. But it seems to me those stores would have little interest in having this new policy work out favorably. Their sales will surely be affected.
Re Post 5215:
@sevmom - Sorry to hear the story. And I do think that is the norm with accidents. That is, not to sue the college because of drinking. Basically, it was an accident.
However, no one is viewing sexual assault as an accident, but as an intentional act of essentially a criminal nature by one student on another student.
Now, if these intentional acts, which many are calling criminal, could be shown as being caused by an illegal activity allowed, and maybe even promoted, by the college itself, I do think the calculus becomes very different.
People accept that accidents happen and are expected, and they act accordingly. However, as evidenced by this thread, people do not accept that rape just happens, but is the result of calculated behavior. There is then, I think, a legitimate question of what liability a college might have if it knows this connection between alcohol and assaults, but then still allows the illegal activity, which it knows inevitably leads to more assaults.
80 percent of college students drink?
What is the percentage of the assaulters who drank alcohol before the assault?
Must be higher than 80 percent, right?
How about the women? 80 percent of those assaulted drank alcohol?
5219 [quote] @Pizzagirl - Date rape drugs are rare while self-induced alcohol abuse is common when it comes to sexual assault under intoxication. Yet, people spend incredible time and energy debating the rare while turning a blind eye towards the common. I believe this is because in the former they can blame someone else for abusing their kids, while in the latter they have to acknowledge that their special snowflakes broke the law and in turn put themselves under terrible risk
[/quote]
On this thread, in several posts, I’ve said I don’t believe date rape drugs are rare. I am skeptical of the reporting. My most recent post on this subject is #4836. I doubt I can state it any better and I’m running out of energy.
I am just happy they follow about 10% of what I have said. The other 90% I figure they ignored or just never heard in the first place.
Awc, I’m in broad agreement with you that colleges ought to do more to curb drinking. I’m merely saying that I’m not optimistic that lawsuits will induce changes, because they haven’t yet.
The tobacco lawsuits succeeded after there was a broad consensus that smoking was bad, and after the rate of smoking plummeted. But if there’s a broad consensus that college bingeing is bad, and bingeing plummets, the problem is solved.
LF: I thought your point regarding names was a good one. I think it is difficult to think outside the patriarchy. It is our reality. Perhaps no other reality exists.