By The Way...

Thursday, March 15, 2007
11:20:00 AM EDT
Hearing Nothing at the moment
When I was in college, done of our annual dorm projects was a "beeramid" -- a beer can pyramid constructed with the cans of beer the dorm drained over the weekend (I, being the one in the dorm who did not drink, was tasked with the actual construction). One year we made a "base 11" beeramid -- the bottom level being 11 cans to a side. I guess today's college kids would find that pretty quaint:

Substance abuse on college campuses is nothing new, but it is taking a more extreme and dangerous form, with higher rates of frequent binge drinking and prescription drug abuse, and more negative consequences for students such as arrests and risky sexual behavior.

That’s the portrait painted by a new, comprehensive report tying together a range of recent research on college substance abuse, supplemented with some of its own new survey data...

The proportion of students who drink (about 68 percent) and binge drink (40 percent) has changed little since 1993. But there have been substantial increases in the number of students who binge drink frequently (take five drinks at a time, three or more times in two weeks), who drink 10 or more times a month, and who get drunk three or more times in a month.

So it's not that more kids are partying, it's that the kids who are partying are partying harder. I'm very sure this is not a good thing because even back in my day, the party-hardy kids were partying pretty hard. And this was at my geek-oriented school, as opposed to a greek-oriented school.

I suspect college kids are going to party no matter what, and that if you want them to practice moderation, the time to start with that message is about four or five years before they hit college. I wonder how many parents do that sort of long-term planning.


Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this

This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)

• #3 Comment from psychfun 
  3/16/07 1:39 AM | Permalink

  Man you should have seen our Rugby Team...geez! Love to know how those guys are now...God only knows. Well, you saw what happened later to the Animal House guys! HA!
• #2 Comment from trunkboy21 
  3/15/07 12:22 PM | Permalink

  I'm curious how this compares to international universities.  (The article may say, I didn't read it in it's entirety)  Is the stereotypical foreign job competition killing as many brain cells on a given weekend?
• #1 Comment from monponsett 
  3/15/07 11:55 AM | Permalink

  I've smoked crack during sex before, but that was at Smith.