<p>“…there is a lot of hard-core binge drinking in high schools these days, especially in affluent suburban and private prep schools. Parents are endorsing the drinking. Crazy.” This is definitely true in my neighborhood. My D has had three close friends from grade school on through high school. Beginning about senior year of high school, all three sets of parents seemed to do all they could to encourage alcohol consumption. This included parties in the home and working out a designated driver rotation so their kids could visit bars/dance clubs with their fake ID’s. Kids coming home falling down drunk seemed acceptable and normal. Due to a chronic medical problem and a family history of alcohol and drug problems, my D tried to remain friends but avoided participation in the alcohol-related events. She had a boyfriend who did not drink so that helped. These kids are now all college sophomores. One of the kids stayed at home and attends community college. She doesn’t seem to drink much and even with severe LD seems to be doing well. The other two selected party schools. They party heavy every weekend and use alcohol and pot on a daily basis. The parents seem to consider this normal, college behavior. The parents do exercise some restraint. They provide alcohol, but do not allow pot smoking in the house. During the last Christmas break, some of the parents also took turns driving the kids to and from the clubs so that all of the kids could have fun without being concerned about a designated driver. My D has had a tough time with this situation. She has not been able to entirely cut the relationship with her old friends, but she doesn’t want to be around them anymore. She has had similar problems in dealing with some friends at college. Fortunately, she selected a college with a minimal drinking culture. I don’t know how kids survive the drinking culture college experience. Maybe some of them just have good genes and get past the experience without lifelong problems.</p>
<p>I am certainly not the expert on this topic that mini, interesteddad, and some others on this thread are, but I was very interested to read through everything that has been said here. As I have written on another thread, my daughter transferred after her freshman year, and a major reason was that she was unhappy with the social life at her first school, which she said was dominated by heavy drinking/partying. Like i-dad’s daughter, my daughter is not a teetotaler. She is very outgoing and loves to have fun, but parties where everyone was drunk, where there was no conversation, just grinding-type dancing, were not her idea of a good time.</p>
<p>It seems like it has been pretty well established that this type of drinking until you are sick is very common among college students, more so at some schools than others. My question now is: WHY do so many students like to do this? There are so many other enjoyable ways to spend one’s time. Both my husband and I drank socially while in college, and still do, but neither of us thought it was fun to get drunk now or then. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now. Can anyone explain?</p>
<p>MotherOfTwo, I’ve read that some people drink excessively because it lowers their social inhibitions.</p>
<p>Maybe it is only the “non-students” that party until they vomit at some schools. :eek: Who’s hosting the campus party? 
</p>
<p><a href=“The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881”>The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881;
<p>TV, movies, the teen desire to fit in, to be cool above all. Cultural peer pressure…that is the type of party seen as cool at a college is passed down to the freshman class. Watch tv carefully. 90% of CSI-NY shows will have a shot of a strip club full of young people or a “college party” where the girls are just about naked, grinding, drinking, screaming with laughter.
We now watch and count semi-nude teen scenes per episode. </p>
<p>Parents with high school kids that allow drinking " at least I know where they are" and drugs “at least he won’t be arrested if he does it at home” are awful parents, imho.</p>
<p>intereresteddad - it seems from your posts that you would now rule out any schools that have a moderate high to high binge drinking rate - or “work hard party hard” reputation. That cuts out some good schools - including Dartmouth, Williams, Duke, UVA. Others with relatively high frat populations and/or popular D1 sports might also make the list (Wake Forest, Miami, Lehigh, Boston College, Notre Dame). Also, most big state schools.
In our house, we let our son take charge of the college selection process with some guidance from us. He selected schools that were good in his major, and we visited to get a sense of social fit. He happens to love sports and rooting for his local football and basketball teams so that was a draw at some schools. We discussed the issue of drinking and party school reputations. He saw drunk kids stumbling around on some of the campuses on some weekend visits - and not always at the schools that you would expect.<br>
In the end, he chose his state school honors program. Strong in his major - liked the campus, plenty of opportunities to shine. And he likes it now that he’s there (loves the football games too - we attended one with him). Were we to put our foot down and say no because of the drinking culture? We expressed our concerns, but bottom line, we must trust that he can handle himself. And this is our only one - so we only have one shot at this. We have never supported alcohol consumption in our house while he was in high schol - and still don’t when he comes home from breaks. So, no, we are not those parents that you reference in your posts who don’t care.<br>
My sense is that MANY schools have some binge drinking going on - if you want to find it you can. We had a neighbors friend withdraw from a bigger Ivy that isn’t known for heavy drinking due to the “overwhelming party atmosphere”. She’s now in a Christian school. It’s all relative.<br>
I’m not saying that schools should ignore the problem - they should do everything they can to tackle the issue. But as a parent, if I really wanted my son to avoid drinking cultures, I would have pushed our local state U right here in town so he could be a commuter student. Those students have the lowest binge drinking rate of all…</p>
<p>Excellent post toneranger.</p>
<p>Whether we want to admit it or not, there are all sorts of bad things that people do in this big scarey world that we live in. When a child is ready for college, we can only hope that we have prepared them to make good decisions. Can we protect them forever? I wish we could.</p>
<p>I work with a man who has a severe drinking problem. I don’t drink excessively just because he does. </p>
<p>I think that some of the parents are burying their heads in the sand to think that the perceived “culture” at a campus will protect their kids from the boogey man. Maybe it is time that some of the parents really wake up and smell the roses. As has been said many times on many related threads, Kids at this stage of life experiment with alcohol, drugs, and sex. It doesn’t matter if they are in college, at a “party college”, or at a college perceived to be less of a party college.</p>
<p>We can only hope that the decisions that our kids make will not harm them, but rather allow them to mature. We could put them in a bubble, but how would that help them? It might make us feel better though… ;)</p>
<p>Parents’ Part?</p>
<p>From the lower end of the spectrum financially, I see affluence as part of the problem. Our kids have had to work all the way through college for their spending money. In high school my son had to pay his one speeding ticket himself–which consumed his entire month’s allowance!</p>
<p>I started thinking of this in the Duke case. 1/3 of the team had <em>multiple</em> drinking and partying violations. Who paid the tickets for this? Not the kids–they did nnot have jobs. Did their parents give them so much spending money that these kids could shrug off hundreds of dollars in fines? Or did they just forward tickets to their parents who said shrugged it off? </p>
<p>Our kids are far from perfect. Maybe just our modest finances protected them, as I know Kid #1 drank sometimes at Grinnell. But she complained that partying took time and money!</p>
<p>1sokkermom - I am not sure if your posts are in response to mine or not. In our family’s case, the issue was not protecting our daughter from a perceived “culture” at her first college. Like Toneranger with his son, we were not worried about her becoming a heavy drinker. When we toured her first college, we were told by the tour guide and by other information put out by the school that, although there was a lot of drinking there, there are plenty of other things to do for people who don’t enjoy drinking. I took this at face value, and was happy for her to choose the school, believing that she would flourish there. I know that such heavy drinking does occur at all schools to some extent, many kids do experiment, as you say, and I am not condemning those that do. The problem arose because my daughter herself was not comfortable being in the minority who did not want getting drunk to be a major part of their social life. Fortunately for her, she is now at a school where a larger portion of the students are more like her and want to do other types of social things, so she is far happier.</p>
<p>“Kids at this stage of life experiment with alcohol, drugs, and sex. It doesn’t matter if they are in college, at a “party college”, or at a college perceived to be less of a party college.”</p>
<p>But what DOES matter is the very fact that they are in college; kids living on campus are more likely to drink excessively during their first year than other age group (which increases the odds of their failing in college, developing future drinking/health problems) and the likelihood of this happening seems even greater when they do not even have to go out of their way to “experiment” but are literally tripping over it in their dorms. </p>
<p>“Experimenting” can easily move to something greater at this age unless there are boundaries other than internal ones (or parents) to control behavior. To refuse to look at this reality (not just the fact that all kids “do it”) is to bury one’s head in the sand. How many of us really want our kids to be guinea pigs for the excessive kind of “experimenting” that goes on in too many colleges these days? Seems to me we should want to find some place between putting our kids in bubbles and putting them in freshmen dorms where they are tripping over vomit…</p>
<p>Motherof Two:
My comments were not directed at you or your situation at all. I was just trying to offer another view. I have heard the tripping over vomit story many times by some of the same posters. I went to undergraduate school in the late 70’s. I was exposed to a lot more than the possibility of tripping over vomit. I went to a huge party school. I survived… ;)</p>
<p>I think we all realize that * most* kids do survive their years at a school where social life for many students centers around
OMG my parents aren’t around-
all the other kids are doing it
this is what you * do* in college
I don’t have any homework anyway.</p>
<p>But I also think that there * are schools* where it isn’t as dominant, and if that is something that is a selection criteria, finding a school like my daughters where students are discussing what they are studying in class, still at 9pm walking across the field, and where the center of activity is the library can be welcome and refreshing.</p>
<p>THis has probably already been mentioned- but I would imagine the vandalism/crime rate on campus is somehow tied to the use of substances particulary alcohol. Another reason to at least be aware of it.</p>
<p>“…finding a school like my daughters where students are discussing what they are studying in class, still at 9pm walking across the field, and where the center of activity is the library can be welcome and refreshing…”</p>
<p>I agree completely. However, there are many brilliant students that are still able to partake in such activities at some of the schools that may be “perceived” by others to be binge-drinking, partying, greek laden, athletic dominant, vomit tripping, campuses. ;)</p>
<p>Of course, and there are many others who don’t want to put up with that. So for them, finding a place where that is not the dominant culture is important. Which is why identifying that difference is important also. MOther of 2’s D discerned that difference when she transfered, as did my D.</p>
<p>For her, not having to wake up to the sight of the guys from the frat house next to her Honors dorm pee-ing on the wall below her window was a big improvement–YMMV.</p>
<p>Interesteddad wrote: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesteddad, I have been helping D research schools for the past year. I’m puzzled by your a) and b) above. I don’t see how diversity and financial aid correlate to a drinking culture, except to think that more diversity = less drinking? And more financial aid = less drinking? Can you say more about that?</p>
<p>Also, about e): can you give me some pointers? D is our only child, so this is all new to us.</p>
<p>However, there are many brilliant students that are still able to partake in such activities at some of the schools that may be “perceived” by others to be binge-drinking, partying, greek laden, athletic dominant, vomit tripping, campuses.</p>
<p>Right…
friend of my daughters for example attended the UW ( when she was 14) but she lived at home & after she graduated she joined the Peace Corps.
I wouldn’t even call UW a * party school* but it does have frats- a football team- and attracts those from 40 miles away who want to come and start a fight.</p>
<p>But for our family- we have been cognizant ( or at least I have- H, not so much), that we have not been able to offer a similar background as families who have * more money, more education, more connections*
and where they attend school, is someplace that we have tried to be very deliberate about, since they will spend so much time there.
College, is really the last time possibly, that we get to have a large influence in the decision. ( We may have other influences as they get older- but not necessarily)
To actively choose a school, where they can not just survive- but thrive, is something that I always keep in mind.</p>
<p>When you look at the graduate success and strong alumni support of many of the colleges touted by cc regulars as in the “high potential binge-drinking category”, it seems that most students that attend these institutions do thrive! </p>
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</p>
<p>I’m surprised that you missed the other three hospital transports from Swarthmore last fall – debate team members from UMaryland and Princeton on campus for a debate tournament:</p>
<p><a href=“The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881”>The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881;
<p>“When you look at the graduate success and strong alumni support of many of the colleges touted by cc regulars as in the “high potential binge-drinking category”, it seems that most students that attend these institutions do thrive!”</p>
<p>That’s absolutely true, and only about 30% of the binge drinkers at these schools become alcoholics over the next 20 years. The vast majority (70%) do not. It may make for uncomfortable student life now (as the letter I quoted of the woman at my alma mater indicated), but it’s only four years.</p>
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<p>I never viewed it as my role to rule in or rule out colleges and, in fact, my daughter visited four of the schools you mention. Rather, my role was to help sort out the differences between colleges so that my daughter could make informed decisions. For example, it is nuts to attend Dartmouth and then say, “I didn’t know that drinking was such a prominent part of the campus culture”. Or, to attend Williams and be surprised at the emphasis on varsity athletics. Or to attend Swarthmore and be surprised that students have to bust their butts academically. A rational selection might well be to attend one of the schools in spite of those things. But, that’s not the same as being ignorant of the campus culture in the selection process.</p>
<p>I think that it’s useful for parents to help their students define and articulate their individual priorities. For example, if a student says that it’s a priority to have access to a city, then of course you scratch some excellent colleges off the list. Why should it be any more problematic to scratch good schools off the list if the priority is avoiding a “drink 'til you puke” social scene? That’s how you whittle a college list down to meet individual fit. I’m just suggesting that campus culture should be an “a-level” issue, not buried in the noise far below whether the Econ professors publish a lot of journal articles.</p>
<p>For the record, I only “ruled out” one college – a college with shaky financial underpinnings and a lack of structure in the academic program to an extent that I simply felt it was not worth the money. It was a non-issue because my daughter never considered it. I might have ruled out another college (guidebook description: “The last bastion of the southern gentleman who can hold his liquor and is damn proud of it.”), but my daughter struck that one off her list without needing any advice from dad.</p>