My middle son went to a very geek oriented high school and was home most nights to study. I’m not naive enough to think that he could not have been exposed to alcohol, but the opportunities were few. We did not have alcohol in the house and his friends and their parents were quite serious about school.
In his first week on campus last (freshman) year, my 18-year-old son went with some friends from the honors dorm to visit some fraternity events. At one of the houses, they served him some kind of jungle juice, very sweet with lots of alcohol. He was encouraged to chug it. The alcohol hadn’t even hit before he had another. He does not remember how many he ultimately was served.
On his way back to the dorm, he started to feel terrible and by the time he got home he was staggering and swerving down the hall, obviously seriously inebriated. His resident advisor (thankfully) intervened, but had to report him. Because he did not drink on campus, the damage was limited to $500 to pay for a couple of alcohol/substance abuse education classes. I think he was also on probation for a semester.
Alcoholism is a serious issue in our family, especially given that several family members on both sides have struggled with alcoholism. So far, the slip-up last year seems to have been a net-positive because our son knows first hand what can happen. He is very serious about school and his health and works out regularly. He knows about his family history and that there he may have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Still, I was pretty pissed off that fraternities don’t seem to have changed much since I was in college back in the horse-and-buggy days. I know that movies glorify fraternity excesses, but it seems like the universities (not singling out Miami) could do more to police the fraternity row parties, especially those intended to attract pledges. (And I also know that Miami has already been cracking down.)
Anyway, more heat than light on this issue from one parent.
Postscript, my wife and I are overall very happy with the education our son is getting at Miami. It’s a beautiful campus in a great little college town. We were concerned that our Arizona son wanted to go to college 1800 miles from home. But, he is doing very well in biomedical/mechanical engineering and was privileged to be selected into the Lockheed-Martin Leadership Institute. He doesn’t even seem to mind the weather that much.