<p>I got a summary citation for underage drinking tonite. I am 17 yrs old. Everything went smoothly as i was being brethylized and cited. No arguments, politness, casual conversation about colleges with cops. They even mentioned my politeness and that they will bring that up in their police reports. So whats are 1. the legal rammifications. 2. what are the effects on college. My safety schools are- pitt, boston u, GWU, penn state. My match schools are NYU, McGill, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, and Reach are cornelly, duke, wash u. Assuming this is a fair representation of my chances prior to the citation what changes now? Last summer I got arreseted for shoplifting and i got a misdemeanor. I did my community service and i never actually went through probation. I had a 6 month period of “good behavir” after which my record was sealed completely to everyone. So with these details in mind can someone, preferably a lawyer or someone who went through this experience, explain to me what i can expect. Thank you.</p>
<p>Uh… why would the colleges ever find out?</p>
<p>It’s all on your juvie record which is sealed once you turn 18. As long as its not a drug conviction, it won’t effect financial aid.</p>
<p>I think the date of sealing depends on the state in which you live. I googled Texas laws, and in general, here it seems juvenile records can be sealed at age 21 or at the court’s discretion as they did with your shoplifting conviction. But there are also rules for MIP that may allow you to have your record expunged. Not sure what those rules are. I hope you have retained an attorney for advice in handling this matter to your best advantage.</p>
<p>Also, another issue is you will be asked if you have been convicted of misdemeanor, felony or other crime on the Common App. How to truthfully answer this may be an issue…another item you should discuss with your attorney. You may want to check each individual school’s application…some (not many) don’t ask the question. Definitely don’t lie. </p>
<p>There are a few attorneys here who will hopefully see this and comment.</p>
<p>thank you for your responses. With my first offense i was told that i was never technically convicted of a misdeameanor so i can answer no for that question. Does anyone have any more imput. I will not be applying for any financial AID and i am more worried about how colleges will view this and if they will even see it.</p>
<p>My s got an MIP this summer, he is 19. It is a Class C misd. so I don’t know if it is even asked about on applications. A class C misd. is like a traffic ticket. He is doing deferred adjudication just to get it dismissed, but the DA told us that it was not a big deal and that he didn’t need a lawyer. He went to court, met with the DA for about 5 minutes and signed the paperwork saying he would take an alchohol awareness course, do 8 hours of comm. service and not get another MIP for 3 months. The arrest will stay on his record until he is 21, then he will file to have it expunged. She told him he really didn’t even need to do that because a class c misd. is the lowest level offense and noone ever asks about them. </p>
<p>About college apps - take a look at the applications you are filling out to see if they ask about misdemeanors. I just looked at the Texas Common app and there isn’t even a question. It is more likely that they will ask if you have ever been convicted of a crime. If you do deferred adjudication, you will have the conviction dismissed, thus no conviction. Or, questions may be posed in the counselors rec form, but it is more likely to be about school related suspensions and if your MIP was not related to a school activity or reported to the school, your counselor would have no record of it. </p>
<p>You don’t have to volunteer unasked for information. If it is specifically asked, then you must answer it truthfully.</p>
<p>My thing wasnt a misdemeanor it was a summary citation. But i did get a misdemeanor last summer so i am curious how that will effect things even though the record is sealed rite now.</p>
<p>If they ask if you have a conviction, you do not report it. According to your post, you were not convicted. By doing deferred adjudication, the conviction was dismissed. If they ask if you have ever been arrested, then you do.</p>
<p>golani
Just checking (and not responding to your specific question)…
Are you ok? You are clearly a bright, high achieving student, but have made some unfortunate choices that have caused some legal consequences. Typically, if a person is “caught” there are many more “trangressions” that have escaped notice. Are you able to speak openly with your parents (or others) regarding these issues, and are you at all concerned? Are you on the path that you want to be on?</p>
<p>golan,</p>
<p>Here’s the thing, you’re creating a dirty laundry list out there. If you truly want to go to college, either get better at not getting caught OR stop doing stupid things as you are getting caught. Chances are better than good you’ll get popped again for something if you don’t learn. </p>
<p>Is college important to you? If yes, why are you (not anyone else) making it so hard to get there? We all screw up in life at one time or another, the real question is what do we learn from it? What are you learning here?</p>
<p>jasmom beat me to the punch…she made the points I was going to</p>
<p>No need to answer here if you don’t want, but think about your behavior…have you done things and not gotten caught? Have you been drinking often, have you shop lifted more than once…did you do those things alone or with others, who may not be the best people to hang with?..</p>
<p>what about your parents…how did they react to the latest incident…do they know about your drinking, etc…</p>
<p>I think you need to look deep inside and see why you are making such lapses in judgement, and as opie said, why take such risks…were those risks worth the consequences…you are very lucky…you could hav gotten a very tough cop who wouldn’t care how charming and well mannered you are…from your posts, I think you have probablly gotten away with stuff because you are well mannered, not sassy, contrite (well at the moment) so you walk away relatively easy…a you get older, it won’t be so easy to slide out of breaking the law…</p>
<p>This is not a lecture, bet you already had one of those, but just a suggestion to see the bigger picture, what you are risking losing, and what changes you might want to make…these are two marks that we know of, and who knows what you have been able to get away with without getting caught…but as you can see, getting busted is just a breath away</p>
<p>Who cares? An underage drinking citation is no big deal. It’s not an arrest, it’s basically a ticket; you simply pay a fine and you might have to go to youth court and do some community service and play with some cute little kids. Maybe just go to a less sketchy party next time so the cops won’t come, also get some better running shoes and bolt when the fuzz comes in.</p>
<p>golani
I have a son who is almost 16 and a son almost 20 at Duke. Neither of them drank in high school (so far) at all. They “get” that they have four years of autonomy right around the corner and handling the issue of underage drinking is tough enough when you are 19. I can’t predict yet how that college era is going to go. It is up to them. Still, to abstain in high school really really helps.
So what is your hurry as a young 17 year old. I hate to be a putz but have you seen that drinking in your teens is actually is very hazardous to your brain which is quite frankly not developed yet and missing Executive Functions until you are older? See some PET scans. You are still in transit up there even though we force you to take the SATs now etc. Drinking at your age is much more addictive prone for later as well. It is best to abstain until you are more of an adult physically. This is science not preaching.<br>
Drinking was legal for me at age 18 and I didn’t have to worry about citations. I sometimes think that 18 was a better age for legal beer consumption but that is not the reality of the under 21 year olds today.</p>
<p>However, I started smoking at your age. I can’t tell you have imprinted that addiction is in my brain, and I think it has to do with cravings established when I was still half a child physically. Not smoking is a big effort for me as an adult because I had the addiction in high school. It is a drag (pun!)managing cravings for stupid things like nicotine or alcohol. No one thinks it is attractive either.
But management of your criminal record should not be taking up an iota of your time at age 17!
The solution is to not drink at all in high school. Believe it or not tons of the most respected people socially at colleges are light social drinkers to zero drinkers, too. There are large contingents of cool people in college now who are totally free of chemicals and health nuts.
I have to say it bothers me to see your birth year in your screen name. You have made a few decisions this year alone where you have gotten caught doing the wrong thing.<br>
Your immaturity is showing. Give your brain a couple more chemical free years. Get thee into a great university and have a wonderful experience but you need to get more real with yourself now.</p>
<p>Get serious about your future if college means a lot to you. There are a zillion opportunities to drink once you get to college, and even then you have at least two years to wait to be legal there.</p>
<p>underage drinking is hardly anything to be making a fuss over we all know you did it when you were younger, you guys just didn’t nget caught.</p>
<p>hobo…
Sometimes you’re right, sometimes not. To me, getting caught (especially having two legal run-ins) presents an argument for a good careful introspective look, and an opportunity to determine whether your behavior is in line with (or in opposition to) your goals.</p>
<p>Look i dont have problems with drinking and such andi have good friends. The shoplifting as immoral and stupid and since ive been caught i have never done it. However, ive been drinking since end of freshman yr and i enjoy it. I have run from the cops once or twice and gotten away this time it would not have been feasible to run because of the location adn situation. I understand the stupiddity. Its not drinking, its getting caught. My parents werent so much concerned about drinking but about being stupid and getting caught. Now i am wondering aboutthe legal rammifications as well concequences for college</p>
<p>However, ive been drinking since end of freshman yr and i enjoy it. </p>
<p>This statement shows Impaired Judgment and the fact that you have to spend energy managing your criminal record shows Impaired Judgment. </p>
<p>I am sorry your parents are only focused on your problems with “getting caught” if you are being straight with parents on this board about that.</p>
<p>Drinking is a lifetime activity/management issue for all of us involving making decisions about values and how to use one’s time and energy. Of course we were also your age at one time and we all have had close calls and good friends who have been arrested, cited etc. We could also have a beer in college and it was not a legal issue. At age fifty, we have friends we love and care about who partied in HS and college the most who later ended up in rehab more than once.</p>
<p>Starting drinking in 9th grade puts you in the At Risk category for many different kinds of Consequences. Starting drinking in 9th grade makes you different, and not in an interesting way. I think you know that.</p>
<p>Be interesting for other things and let drinking recede in your social life.</p>
<p>Put Lucifer in this search engine when you have the time. He was also drinking in his early high school years.</p>
<p>golan,</p>
<p>Here’s what you’re not getting in most of the messages posted… look at the things you are doing and see where trouble is as a possibility and make a decision. If your goal is college, maybe park the beer for a year and avoid another mishap or keep doing what you’re doing and if you pick up a DUI or have an accident or anything… live with the results.</p>
<p>It’s the laws of probability to concern yourself with. If you drink there is a probability you might get caught again… if you don’t for a while, what’s the probability of a MIP? </p>
<p>It sounds like your a smart kid doing stupid things. That’s not unusal, it’s pretty normal. Your answer is pretty tipical too… alot of YA YA SURE SURE…
If having a weekend or weeknight beer over the next year is more important to you than a clean sheet to college, nobody can stop you. Maybe you don’t get caught, maybe you do. What’s that beer worth to you? </p>
<p>Keep in mind as long as a written record was created, there’s no such thing as a sealed record. If somebody else knows, it’s not a secret. There are ways to find out just about anything these days. Even the inability to open a record, means there’s something inside. Name one time where the term “sealed record” means something good? When your in competition for enrollment with somebody else, how much lead do you want in your trackshoes?</p>
<p>you know what, golan, and this is going to sound mean, but I wish they had really busted you you need a serious wake up call</p>
<p>we had a poster here who talked albout drinking, and getting drunk, and no one could tell him anything</p>
<p>he is dead from drinking, as a freshman in college</p>
<p>your parents, if you are telling the truth, are fools and no wonder you do what you do</p>
<p>if they cared about you at all, you woudn’t be told, to not get caught next time</p>
<p>I am no going to offer anymore advice, as you know it all…and to be honest, don’t deserve any…you have learned nothing from this experience…</p>
<p>My husband is a lawyer. The phone rings here at night anytime a neighbor or colleague’s son or daughter has a Citation, a DUI or a car wreck. That is really why I bothered to respond to your 2am question after you were cited. Do we love some of these kids…you bet. Have many of them turned out just fine. Of course.<br>
The fact that you were stealing when you were past fifteen not Five is a red flag. </p>
<p>At 17, you are one year from having to sign your Honor Code at the University that admits you. This is actually a big deal at many colleges. Any lying or cheating or stealing is prohibited and kicked to student run systems in many cases. But mainly, colleges try not to admit students who would require adjudication services.</p>
<p>Your talking about “running from cops” – Reminds me of Lucifer writing us about how to buy Everclear and beer by changing the bar codes in stores so he could bypass the law…he had been doing this for years, and he seemed to think we would think this was clever or funny. His judgment was impaired. His ethics were impaired. They did not match his terrific intellect. He had a big connection to drinking equals socializing by age 17. He was in Cornell after acing a long list of AP exams with fives. He was a very intelligent person who was popular and energetic. However, after he died on St. Patty’s weekend in my state at the Unversity of Virginia the two older UVa kids who bought his supply in Charlottesville were dragged through the courts and punished. The frat he rushed at Cornell had confronted him about his disconnect from “reality” about his drinking, so he dropped out of rush. He had been confronted many times by friends. Problems that came from drinking were glossed over and rationalized.</p>
<p>One of the reasons so many parents remember him so clearly is that Lucifer always wrote in a very articulate manner when he addressed the parent board. </p>
<p>If you want adult opinion on this matter or later on college app matters, I would suggest that you write at your best level when you post. </p>
<p>Every college app is different.<br>
I know a kid who began top his 10 LAC with this little citation blot on his record that made participation on his sports team probationary even after he was admitted (Post April, seniors can get a little slack when the pressure is off and let their guards down.)
I know a kid who lost his place in the Naval Academy after it was too late to apply anywhere else.</p>
<p>Your post indicates that A. You care about not getting caught and B. You care about not having negative consequences for your college apps. You have to think about more subtle things. Who are you trying to impress in life…people who chide you for not running from cops adeptly or should you change your peer group? What people think of you and what they say about you…not every contact with a college is necessarily on paper and you can’t control what a reference may say about you. We never saw a written word of any reference sent to my S’s eight colleges. We don’t know what phone contact took place between his school and any college. You probably won’t either.</p>
<p>Your reach colleges and even your match colleges have a large pool of equally qualified young men and women to choose from in many cases. Duke turned down 800 valedictorians the year my son was admitted. Stats aren’t everything by a long shot.</p>
<p>Colleges today try very hard to avoid “problem” students…sorry but this is true for litigation purposes. My husband has also been involved in litigation on the subject of students with histories that colleges don’t want to deal with. Colleges seek students with strong self governance and emotional maturity. Colleges really don’t care to be in the Police job that today’s 21 year old legal drinking age creates but the law is the law. When I was your age boys 17 and 18 were going to Vietnam. Beer was a non issue. You will be in a different ball game of four more years of legal risks. So again, my parental advice. Make alcohol unimportant in your life in high school. Prepare for a longer spell in college when you are still not legal but around people who are legal all the time. Make changes before they are made for you.</p>