by Jessica Velez
U-Wire
AUSTIN, Texas - Recently, the American Medical Association asked The Princeton Review to eliminate their "Party Schools" list from the Best College series, to the chagrin of many new alumni. Not only did this list provide an easy reference for worried parents (now why did Johnny choose that school?), but it also showed prospective students at which universities one could find both an education and a social life.
But this sort of view is not one that educators joyfully endorse. They want to present parents with the image of a pristine center of education, where their child would study diligently for hours and make straight A's with little effort thanks to the academic atmosphere.
A wake-up call is in order. To believe a student will go to a university and not attend at least one party with alcohol is naãve. Colleges have earned their alcoholic reputations, but college life is not a 24-hour binge party unless the student makes it so. Parents need to wake up and take responsibility for their child's potential actions. If the student was raised in a home where alcohol was treated as some sort of repulsive disease rather than the staple of human society it is, the child will have an immature view of the alcoholic world and is far more likely to indulge him or herself than a student who was raised in an alcohol-tolerant environment.
The ability to drink responsibly is not something that magically materializes on one's 21st birthday; it is something that must be learned and acquired. But to think that parents will take a more tolerant view towards drinking, especially with the incessant drunken-driving murders that occur, is also naive. Because of social taboos, alcohol has become what parents fear most: a lethal agent.
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The United States is renowned world-wide as a stodgy country when it comes to drinking - many other countries have younger legal drinking ages, some of which are younger than a child's driving age. This gives a child the opportunity to learn his or her alcoholic limit and thus become a responsible drinker before potentially becoming a hazard on the road. But because the United States treats underage drinking as the Forbidden Fruit, it has become a social taboo, practically a bragging right: "I got totally wasted at last night's party."
For many who have been refused the seeming privilege of drinking previously, their first time drinking heavily can be a terrible, even scary experience, complete with bingeing and eventually passing out. The risk is far greater for these types of people than for a person who has been taught from an early age to respect the potential effects of heavy drinking, and even come to realize their drinking limit. First-time drinkers can make it a nightly habit, having suddenly discovered the hazy joy of being drunk. Some can even become addicted to this sensation, and this is far more fatal to one's academic life than an occasional drink.
A responsible drinker is taught to respect alcohol for the lethal agent it could become, not fear it or see it as some sort of far-away privilege that only others are able to enjoy. Both of the latter views only serve to make alcohol more enticing overall, a strange yet popular - and therefore good - product.
Even worse is when the parent tells the student they shouldn't drink at all. To tell a child not to do or say something only fills the child with a sudden insatiable urge to do or say just what they were told not to. This reverse psychology does not disappear with age - perhaps the ability to resist becomes stronger, but it is a well-known fact that peer pressure is the most powerful force on Earth, up to and including natural disasters.
Therefore, a parent should simply know that words alone will not suffice. Teaching by example is the way to go.
This is not to say that all college students who were raised in an alcohol-free environment become incessant drinkers when they hit college. Some of them develop an aversion to drinking in general, and some are mature enough to handle the entire situation without previous experience. But parents cannot assume their child has this level of maturity; it is far better for the student's safety for parents to assume the opposite, and raise them to accept and respect alcohol for what it is, what it could become, and what it can be.
