Brother Suspended, Need Advice!

scansmom
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:04:48 +0000

“I think the reason they sent him home is fear of lawsuits. This is becoming more common and people asking for multi-million dollar damages when the student is seriously injured or dies. Because of this students are run out of school asap. There was a sad thread here about kids thought to be very depressed or suicidal and being locked out of their dorm and hustled out the door, so to speak.”

Absolutely it’s fear of lawsuits. Colleges often either look the other way or give you a slap on the wrist for “minor” alcohol infractions. Otherwise, as others have stated, they’d risk losing a huge number of their student population. But if the infraction is at a level where there are possible liability issues at stake, they take action, and often, regardless of whether it is a first offense or not.

I have been reading this thread with interest since it’s in many ways related to my S’s current situation. As I’ve recently posted elsewhere, S with Aspergers just got a deferred suspension - which was getting off lightly, in his case - as a result of removing and discharging a fire extinguisher which caused the alarm to go off in his dorm. First offense. Infrequent drinker (if we believe what he says). The only way school officials knew that this was alcohol-related is because he told them he had been drinking, and that the alcohol had been provided by his roommate (of course, nothing happened to the roommate since he wasn’t “caught”).

Hopefully S has learned his lesson, now that he has seen how seriously the school takes some offenses, and also now that he can no longer live in the dorms and is not allowed to enter any of the dorms on campus. He’s also being required to go through substance abuse counseling and do community service (he also needs to write a 10-page paper which in effect would be a rewrite of the school’s fire safety training/procedures and alcohol education).

But what’s the lesson learned by all the other students? Don’t get caught. And don’t admit to anything. S has gotten no support from any of the other “friends” he hung around with–they all just think he was “stupid” for having gotten caught, or in his case, having owned up to what he did. Not for drinking. Sure, this is a good time to try to make new friends, but that is sometimes easier said than done for some people. And dealing with possible depression has now moved to the top of my new concerns for this kid.
Many of us may agree that in the case here, the brother most likely has a more serious problem requires counseling or treatment, and also that his behavior was serious enough to warrant the sanctions.

But I’m not sure that even the threat of suspension really has much effect on the attitudes of a lot of students. When it comes to alcohol and young adults, in general, the solution cannot just be legal consequences, whether that be school sanctions or criminal charges. And it cannot be alcohol education after a drinking problem has developed (this will not necessarily guarantee that the individual’s attitudes towards drinking will change other than perhaps short term) because unfortunately as long as they think they can get away with it, they will probably continue to do so. And it’s that attitude, that willingness to take risks because they can and because they believe that bad stuff will not happen to them, only to others, which I think leads to binge drinking and thus the more likely possibility of more immediate or serious harm to the individual or those around them (and thus possible liability to the school).

This is unfortunately not such a black and white issue, like a traffic violation, where you can just say, you should have known the rules and therefore if you break them, you get what you deserve. It seems to me that as long as drinking is socially acceptable among adults, we will always have problems with the attitudes towards drinking that our young people are apparently adopting in large numbers. Unless there are more efforts to educate them earlier and to make them understand the consequences, effects and realities of alcohol before it becomes a problem - and before they even take that first sip.