On balance, I believe Middlebury gets most things right when it comes to providing a protected learning environment on the one hand, and challenging our students to exercise judgment and independence, on the other. Yet, there are, of course, things we can do better.</p>
<p>I am going to be rather blunt in highlighting one of those things we need to work on, so please bear with me. My objective in engaging this difficult topic is to try to give some legitimate oomph to the message I wish to convey today to our graduating seniors—that the personal quest for an enriching and fulfilling life itself requires individuals to make deep commitments to building and sustaining their communities.</p>
<p>The issue I believe we have failed to address effectively is that of alcohol abuse and the consequences it has for individuals as well as for our community. Obviously, this is not a problem particular to Middlebury. But of course, simply because so many colleges and universities seem to exhibit paralysis on this topic does not mean we should accept irresponsible and self-destructive behavior.</p>
<p>We have been more fortunate than many peer institutions during the past few years in terms of the number of extreme incidents we have experienced as a result of extreme drinking, but that is hardly a consolation. Our dedicated health educators and student life colleagues have put together an extensive array of programming designed to inform our students of the risks and consequences of alcohol abuse, yet the behavior continues. </p>
<p>At the heart of the problem is the prevailing attitude one hears so frequently from students … that it’s OK, indeed normal, to drink heartily once, twice, or three times/week because one has worked so hard.</p>
<p>This approach to life in college is by no means new, nor is it limited to Middlebury. Glance at the Ivy Gate blog or student blogs at various NESCAC schools and one will come across numerous references to the work hard, play hard dimension to college life, and the seeming acceptance of the irresponsible behavior that such a culture creates. A few of the posts on those blogs might shock some of you, but it is representative, I think, of the attitudes that now pass as the norm.</p>
<p>The expression work hard, play hard itself is not a problem, of course. Who would argue with something that celebrates balance in one’s life? Or fun? How the meaning and understanding of the term has changed, however, especially when it comes to life in college, is the problem. Today, the “play hard” component of work hard, play hard includes a significant amount of what Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman has called “high-risk drinking,” a polite term for binge drinking, usually involving hard alcohol. Binge drinking, for the less familiar, is defined as a male consuming five drinks at one sitting and a female four, usually within a four hour period. In the olden days, according to several accounts from 50-something and 60-something alumni from some highly regarded party schools, the play hard component seemed far more benign, as it largely had to do with pranks, usually done outdoors, accompanied by hearty drinking that involved almost exclusively beer. There was little recollection, or mention, of the widespread “collateral damage” from the playing hard that has become the norm today.</p>
<p>The so-called collateral damage from irresponsible drinking is all too familiar to students, staff, and administrators who must regularly, literally and figuratively, clean up the mess. Dorm and property damage, disrespect of staff and fellow students, fighting, and sexual assaults are just some of the all-too-common incidents associated with alcohol abuse on campus. Our public safety office reports that more than half the calls they receive—more than half of all their calls—are related to alcohol or substance abuse.</p>
<p>Most frightening is the long-term impact binge drinking has on one’s brain and its development. Researchers have found that alcohol can do serious and irreparable harm to a teen’s and young adult’s brain. In a study completed by a team of neuroscientists, individuals aged 21-24, who drank enough to attain blood alcohol levels just below the legal limit (just below .08), recorded greater incidences of brain impairment—that is, a decrease in the ability to learn new information, form memories, and perform cognitive functions—than individuals who drank the same amount and were only four years older. This research supports the long-held view that alcohol has a significant destructive impact on the development of the brain before one reaches one’s mid-20s.</p>
<p>One has to wonder why, if the implications of irresponsible drinking are so clear, bright and aspiring individuals resort to binge drinking and using hard alcohol to the extent they do? The impact of such drinking, as self-reported by our own first-years, is quite evident and not buried only in scientific journals. Almost a third of our first-years who took part in a survey on alcohol use said that within two weeks of completing the survey they had experienced a blackout—a period of amnesia that can last for seconds, minutes, hours, and/or days that prohibits the natural development of memory and recollection of recent events.</p>
<p>It is interesting to hypothesize as to why this generation in particular has taken the work hard, play hard approach to life in college to the extremes it has. Some who have written on the subject believe it is the need to release pressure that students feel coming from their parents who, ironically, or perhaps explicably, grew up during social and civil rights movements and now feel compelled to provide for their children the very structures and limits they fought to remove; others see it as a reaction to the pressure caused by increased competition for jobs and opportunities brought about by globalization; and others, still, including many students with whom I have spoken during the past three years, believe it is simply a function of the current work and activity load at Middlebury, which, I agree may very well be out of whack. The great amount of work assigned by our faculty, they argue, prevents many students from pursuing a healthy day-to-day balance between work and non-work activities, which creates the kind of pressure cooker that is best relieved by intense drinking.</p>
<p>The overall impact of binge drinking that is part and parcel of the new, self-destructive work hard, play hard approach to college life is the diminishing of what one learns and experiences at a place like Middlebury. It prevents the integration of many of our international students, who openly wonder why students who are so smart in class, appear to be so dumb out of class when it comes to how they socialize and use alcohol. This obsession with extreme alcohol consumption is foreign to so many students from different cultures on our campus. It results in less interaction and engagement within the study body, which translates into missed opportunities for students to hear different perspectives on the arts, politics, and life in general, and to learn about vastly different cultures that coexist on our campus. In other words, it leads to behavior that interferes with the larger, loftier, goals of a liberal arts education.</p>
<p>Recognizing our own inability to counteract, to date, the emergence of this new, self-destructive work hard, play hard culture gives us some guidance on how to be more effective in dealing with this challenge. For us, as an institution of higher education, responsible for providing the best possible liberal arts education, our limited success so far calls upon us to rely more on student leadership and peer pressure than on administrative policies and programs. Administrative directives can’t get us very far when the socialization among newly entering students into the newer version of work hard, play hard is so strikingly quick – or has taken place before students arrive here. Students themselves need to be a large part of the solution, and some have already shown how effective their involvement can be.</p>
<p>A good example of effective student leadership was that exercised by this year’s Feb orientation leaders, largely sophomores and juniors who volunteer to help orient incoming Febs adjust to entering the College mid-year. During several lunches at the president’s house with this year’s entering Febs, just about every student mentioned how their orientation leaders took charge of the drinking issue on their own accord, not as directed by administrators. They encouraged their charges to respect the drinking laws, and mentored them when peer pressure to drink in excess began to mount. This is the kind of guidance and support for younger students we will need to engender among more upperclassmen, if we are to reduce irresponsible drinking and create the respectful environment we desire and expect for our students.</p>
<p>For you, as young adults about to graduate into the so-called “real world,” the stubborn persistence of this culture highlights the importance for you, as individuals, to take some degree of moral responsibility for the behavior of fellow members of whatever community you choose to live in. This will require you to take seriously the importance of building communities in which standards of decency, self-respect, and respect towards others are upheld by those in it.</p>
<p>This insight, about the relationship between, on the one hand, the opportunity to live fulfilling, dynamic, and enriching lives, and, on the other, the need for an individual’s deep, strong commitments to the values of one’s community, is not a new one. Aristotle helped us to begin thinking about this issue more than two thousand years ago. And as with all such profound insights about human civilization, every generation must figure out for itself how to apply such wisdom to one’s own era.</p>
<p>For you, the graduating class of 2008, I would offer the following:</p>
<p>Do not accept self-destructive behavior from your friends and peers. You would not have come to college here in the first place, nor exercised the diligence and focus necessary to complete your degree, had you not believed firmly in the values of a liberal arts education. Believing in the liberal arts means you believe in learning, in the lifelong worth and possibility of personal growth and engagement in the world around you. Our world today needs you and your generation to combat the self-destructiveness of extreme behaviors with the creation and support of communities characterized by individuals watching out for one another. We look to you, now steeped in the life-affirming values of the liberal arts, to work hard and play hard with wisdom into the future.</p>
<p>Congratulations and best wishes as you embark on the next exciting chapter of your lives.