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Stanford's New Alcohol Policy Isn't Based On Much Research (vice.com)
Sophia Carter-Kahn, reporting for Motherboard: Last week Stanford University announced a strict new alcohol policy in hopes to curb binge drinking. The new policy bans hard liquor at on-campus parties, and restricts hard alcohol in undergraduate possession to containers smaller than 750 milliliters ("a fifth"). Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital]. Universities across the country are looking for new ways to deal with dangerous binge drinking. If this new restriction at Stanford is successful, it would set a precedent for how universities across the country grapple with a seemingly insurmountable alcohol problem. There's just one catch: there's little data to suggest restricting bottle size can change college drinking culture. Colleges have tried different strategies, from mailing parents flyers about alcoholism stats to policing campuses to break up parties. Dartmouth College, for example, implemented a hard alcohol ban last year. And the University of Virginia cracked down on liquor and Greek life on campus. But their efforts don't seem to be working. Drunkorexia -- skipping meals to have more room for alcohol -- is on the rise. And administrative desperation to find some way to reduce alcohol consumption has continued.
Change culture, not containers.
So there is no data. Shock, surprise, fire from the sky, goat men walking out of cracks in the earth, cats laying down with did.
Absolute chaos.
When people realize their only hope is to train to be a successful obedient slave they have a tendency to seek measures that will help deaden the pain, and deceive themselves into thinking they really are having a great time. The bonus? They get to pay for it all themselves and go into lifelong debt for their efforts.
Should have picked a trade before choosing the rank and file of paper pushers, report carriers, metrics analysis and professional privilege checking.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
The only commonly available booze in smaller quantities are the little airline bottles. That's the next stop down from 750ml.
Get rid of Liddy Doles pernicious tying of Federal Highway subsidies to a drinking age of 21. Let the states lower the drinking age as they see fit, and watch the states with the lower drinking ages have a reduction of binge drinking in their colleges.
Seriously, the problem is that drinking is only allowed at 21. Back in Europe, especially South Europe and Eastern Europe parents give small amounts of wine to children in a controlled family environment around the age of 6, diluted with water or lemonade as much as 1:20. Beer is offered around 9, at amount of one half water glass (around 125ml). By 13 most teens have a glass of wine of a bottle of beer (500ml) perfectly responsibly on extended family gatherings, and by 14 it is usually their first (and very often last) drink till you pass out moment. They are embarrassed, it hurts and they never repeat it. By 21 most don't care much for a drink, and will have a beer or two with lunch or dinner, and never get drunk, engage in binge drinking, do stupid stunts like Americans do - beerpong or kegstands, or drink so much that they are outside of control or pass out. By 30 most people will be having 2-3 drinks per month.
On the other hand compare that to Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries with their fake moral, fake abstinence, and you get people being so long forbidden of drinking that the first time they are out of the control of their parents and are with likeminded out of control individuals they are trying to go into dick measuring contents, trying to impress girls and whatnot, or just plain enjoying the forbidden fruit so much and so often that they frequently drink till they pass, repeatedly for many years. There is no element of embarrassment of falling asleep on the toilet seat with pants down and your parents coming to wake you up. There is not enough head hurting from getting drunk while the organisms isn't strong enough. And there is definitely the self-ratification of doing the forbidden thing.
Same in fake morals America. The solution to responsible drinking isn't prohibition and increasing age restriction. It is controlled introduction from a young age, that allows to gain experience, lose the novelty, and also build tolerance.
How many medical transports from people smoking too much weed?
... the drinking age is 18, or even lower, many college campuses have undergraduate pubs, and binge drinking is a vastly smaller issue.
Americans are stupid.
Liquor is sold in "pints" and "half pints" typically 375ml and 200ml in every place I've been to -- in fact it's very difficult to actually purchase the little single shot bottles in many states without purchasing a bunch of them together in a larger package.
Let them start drinking while they're still under the supervision of their parents, while they can still be told "no" and not shrug it off. And let them attend parties where hard alcohol is served before they are allowed to participate. Nothing cures binge drinking like seeing drunk people while being sober.
I am not saying that drinking is a skill, but the craziness occurs because many kids go from not being allowed to drink, ever, to having unrestricted access. I think that most of us have learned that abstinence does not work, but still we think we can let kids learn to drink all at once and not see terrible consequences.
In civilized places like Texas a parent is an affirmative defense to a minor drinking. I certainly knew how to manage my drinking by the time I was 18. I saw many people without this skill get shit faced. Of course when people are getting drunk for the first time as adults without supervision there are going to be negative consequences.
Also, of course, there are people who are addicts, and those people need to be identified early and provided with appropriate medical attention. I can't imagine a worse time to learn one is an addict than at college.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
restricts hard alcohol in undergraduate possession to containers smaller than 750 milliliters
Seems I can still purchase my Scotch.
I went to a rural Baptist university. A dry campus in a dry town (the one sports bar in town could only serve beer and wine). We were going to parties on campus and getting drunk pretty much every weekend after our football games. Hell, I never even drank until I went to that school. I don't see Stanford being very successful.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The listened to whatever Social justice Warriors asked for in their policies, then implemented that.
Got to do something about the imaginary "rape culture" rampant across college campuses, even if it means treating adults like children...
Liquor is sold in "pints" and "half pints" typically 375ml and 200ml ....
Damn you Jimmy Carter!! We were on the road to a Metric society and you blew it!! All 39cm , mm, meters, yards, inches, liters, gallons, milliliters, ounces ( awe fuck it )of it!
How is this news for nerds, or stuff that matters?
Let 'em.
If the smart people want to get wasted why aren't they inventing new, unclassified drugs?
Make the possession and use of weed exempt from even verbal warnings bythe campus Stasi.
While I'm sure the Colorado campuses have reactionary rules regarding marijuana consumption -- to mollify parents, and because they're so paranoid about alcohol they'd naturally extend the same confused Calvinistic moralism to marijuana -- how has it affected campus alcohol consumption?
I'm guessing it hasn't gone away, but I wonder if serious incidents have declined. Of course I would expect many people to "double their pleasure", smoking pot and drinking, I would kind of expect that pot consumption would temper the desire for alcohol consumption, either from a don't-want-to-get-off-the-couch perspective or simply because getting high got them 50% of the inebriation they could tolerate and the booze necessary for the other 50% manages to be below the puke-and-black-out level that using only alcohol would produce.
I'm glad they mentioned Dartmouth College. The administration at Dartmouth has long tried to restrict alcohol, while the culture there fully embraces it. There's even an unofficial mascot, Keggy the Keg.
But to fully appreciate Dartmouth drinking, you need to understand Drinking Time: https://youtu.be/avYUL1A-WUM?t...
Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital].
That's an eminently achievable goal without any restrictions on activities at all.
If they really aren't comfortable with a "leave 'em where they lie" policy, the admniistration could always try a new sanctioned procedure of (1) propping them in the corner, (2) feeding them a spoon of Ipecac, and (3) hooking a gallon IV to their arm until morning. I'll bet < $100/instance with a minimally trained campus volunteer squad. Other than ensuring the little 'uns don't fall forward to drown in their own vomit, a hospital isn't going to be able to do much more than that.
Hah, only 749 ml, good to go!
I've done plenty of research on the subject. So much that, despite not having a drink in the last 18 years, I still average more daily consumption than a typical college student.
Cheers!
They need to put on a show of trying to control drinking after the high profile rape case. Everyone knows it's just a ritual, but they need to do it.
Also a big thanks goes out to our other sponsors bud, bud light, and bud light lime
I'm not being demeaning, just pointing out the obvious to the college...
When you tell someone they can't do something or limit them, they.........? You don't know the answer to this, obviously, or you're trying to get MORE medical transports to up the budget. When you tell people they can't do something, they go to every effort to do it, more often to excess. When you limit something, it triggers the immediate dismissal of the order by the user, and encourages non-users to use because they feel they're missing out on something awesome.
*head-desk*
Usually the family of a student is paying for the education. As such the family need to know how and what the student is doing. I know they may be over the "report to family age", but since this situation demands something real and hard be done, report any and all drinking, drugging and hospital events to the familys might go a long way with reigning in the abuse. Yes the educational institution need to take a hard stand on this and bring it under control. Make it part of the admission policy so all familys and students know what will happen when they drink or abuse drugs. Yeah the students may be over the age where they are considered adult and "on their own" but one needs to get real so report them to some agency that can put real pressure on the students, family or guardian.
A fifth of what? I have never seen drinks sold in a 3.75 L bottle.
Trouble is, you think it's scientific research. No, this is legal research. Sanford talked to their lawyers and said "how can we avoid being sued or have our brand associated with this". The lawyers gave a reply. And thus a new rule is born.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dartmouth student here. Got hit by a liquor ban last year. We still get shitfaced in dorm rooms every weekend. Can confirm it doesn't work.
that the president of the University intent on curbing binge drinking is named Hennessy?
But not all bars server to people under 21.
Clearly, it's a collaboration with the nearby liquor stores. Price by volume is always higher for the smaller bottles. Now, instead of buying one bottle of 750ml, you have to buy 2x 375ml, or 4x 200ml, or 15x 150ml (airline size).
If you want to reduce binge drinking, lower the drinking age back to 18 in the U.S., before MADD started us down this road in the name of "think of the children!".
In my undergraduate days in the 70's, beer and occasional wine were staples at college parties, starting from the moment you were a freshman. Going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning was almost unheard of. You simply couldn't drink enough beer or wine to do that without puking it up. Those rare cases when it did occur were because of "hunch punch" parties using grain alcohol or vodka.
Raising the drinking age to 21 has not significantly affected the percentage of 18-to-20-year-old drinkers. The same percentage still drinks as it did 30 years ago, but instead of drinking a few beers in the open, and maybe getting sick to your stomach because you had too much, you knock down a fifth of hard liquor in your room, out of sight. In my day, the juniors and seniors watched out for the new drinkers if they had too much. Nowadays, the juniors and seniors are just part of the problem.
MADD can pat themselves on their backs all they want, but they have only somewhat reduced one problem (underage drinking and driving) while enormously increasing another (binge drinking and alcohol abuse), not to mention the effect of teaching an entire generation of young people that laws are written to be ignored.
What I will be curious to see is what happens 20 years from now when autonomous vehicles have made DUI an obsolete crime. (It's already happening with ride-sharing services - the percentage of young adults with driver's licenses has been steadily dropping.) I look forward to the day when 18-year-olds stand up and demand their rights as legal adults, and put an end to MADD's moralizing hypocrisy.
I'll drink to that!
> but hear of far fewer cases of drunk driving and I have a really hard time
You certainly may hear about it less. On the other hand, German men have a 27% higher rate of death from cirrhosis of the liver than US men. In fatal car crashes, alcohol is involved slightly more often in Germany than in the US.
There may be less media attention in Germany, but the policies aren't actually working any better than US policies.
See also:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitst...
US numbers have improved greatly since the 1980s - DWI deaths have been cut in half.
https://report.nih.gov/nihfact...
One benefit of having 50 different states with different being enacted at different times is that you can compare the results. When California tries one law, Texas does it a bit different, Florida does a public awareness campaign without a new law, you can compare the changes in each state to see which approaches work. The National Institutes of Health determined the two things that worked best are a) enforcing DWI laws - unenforced laws are clearly useless and b) raising the drinking age.
It's an interesting theory, but based on preliminary digging I did into it, the data doesn't back it up.
Here's Alcohol consumption per capita. The U.S. is towards the bottom (least) of the pack.
Here's Rate of alcohol-related deaths. Eastern European countries top the list. Germany, France, Denmark Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Poland, hell even Canada all have higher death rates than the U.S. Italy and Spain have much lower death rates.
Here's a list of countries with the highest alcoholism rates. All have no drinking age or 18 year drinking age.
Based on a quick perusal of these stats, I can't find any real pattern or correlation with consumption, minimum age, addiction, and death rate. The one interesting stat was that this is predominantly a white and Hispanic problem. Blacks and Asians are less than half as likely to binge drink. Suggesting either genetics or social culture is the distinguishing factor, since all of those people grew up and live under the same laws.
Why does there have to be more science? It's common knowledge that excess drinking is harmful. Backed, of course, by 50 years of science... And for you who don't know, anything more than one drink per day is considered excess.
Just moves it off campus where they aren't liable.
It's about deflecting law suits, not actually changing anything.
How about they just make the programs rigorous enough that people who engage in that kind of behavior flunk out after the first semester? College and Universities have become roughly the equivalent of daycare centers. Raise the standards and thin the herd.
"Why are they drinking so much?" Though I imagine this is more honestly about liability than any concern for the students.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
You know what else has happened in those years since the drinking age was raised? DUI was elevated to a major crime. Surely this and the awareness campaigns around drinking and driving (get a ride) are the real cause. I can tell you from personal experience that underage people still drink, and quite a lot. The law raising the age is ignored by young people.
Binge drinking was often the only option when I was in college. I never had time during the week with all the stress from being a student and it naturally turned into the easiest outlet. I'm not saying college should necessarily be easier but I'm honestly not surprised that it's the outcome of high stress environments. It's not even just greek life where this happens cause I sure wasn't and I sure got fucked up beyond belief.
I know my department started having a calendar for the professors so they could make sure there weren't extreme conflicts (like three tests in one day or a ton of major projects due) for students. But that's only effective at higher levels as there's no way you could really coordinate all the classes among departments and students.
I'd love to see the drinking age lowered but MADD's never going to let that go. I really can't wait until self driving cars are ready.
Mike's is good stuff. I wish we had it here.
Based on the assumption that the best and brightest young minds in the country are too stupid to figure out how to smuggle hard liquor onto campus!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
BYU keeps No. 1 ‘stone-cold sober’ title in Princeton Review; Syracuse is top party school
http://www.sltrib.com/news/1393197-158/university-college-princeton-review-party-syracuse
In my state, when parents are illegally buying booze for a teenager's end-of-school party, there is an obvious attitude that unsupervised drinking is normal. It also results in 14 year-olds guzzling half a bottle of liquor at their first 'grown-up' party and suffering alcohol poisoning. Late teens is when many teenagers get some independence and thus have to find their limit and the discipline to "stay safe", which is more difficult when there isn't a socially-imposed limit. I think this is one of those "everyone is doing it" issues, so demands for individual responsibility won't help. When teens don't interact/live with their parents on a daily basis, it is too late to teach rules about safe behaviour. One cannot supervise teens who don't care about parents' rules.
There is good evidence supporting drug education and sex education during the pre-teen years, indeed this is when children memorize what adults really do and think. But too many parents have an aversion to facing the truth; namely that children do not have the the same priorities and the same rules that they have. Which is why children need to face difficult choices and parents need to ensure the wrong choice doesn't cause injury and harm. Children need to be taught the correct attitude, based on the reality that adults like fucking and recreational drugs, about 8 years before they do it, not 8 months.
I was a participant in the MIT porn wars in the 1980's, the ones that led to Dean McBay's departure as a complete idiot not in contact with any actual students or staff who actually work with students.
http://www.mit.edu/activities/...
i dont think kids are binging any more than I did in college and when I drank I drank like a fish. I think the danger is kids today think nothing is wrong with putting any pill into their system they can get their hands on and binge drinking which is a very BAD combo activity esp when your friends then cant tell the paramedics just what you ingested.
Some schools have banned alcohol or have a honor code that prohibits the consumption of alcohol but there is still a drinking problem at these schools. Brigham Young has a long history of being called the most sober institution in the country and an honor code that prohibits the consumption of alcohol. There are still incidents of intoxicated students at BYU and some students abuse pain killers instead of alcohol. Restricting or outright banning alcohol will not stop the people who abuse alcohol. It will only make it harder for responsible people who do drink but don't abuse alcohol to buy alcohol. The state of Utah has plenty of nanny legislation such as a law stating that you must order food with alcohol purchases at a restaurant, alcoholic drinks must be made in a separate partition with a 7 foot non-see-through barrier to prevent people from seeing drinks being made, you must go to the state liquor store to buy wine coolers and nearly all other alcohol, etc. Despite Utah having a relatively low drinking population and many alcohol control regulations, there is still a big problem with drunk driving in Utah.