A few weeks ago I read an interesting story about the Presidents of Duke, Syracuse, Ohio State, and 90 or so other colleges who signed a letter requesting the federal government lower the legal drinking age to 18 to help curb binge drinking. (Note: Imagine our surprise when we discovered in this USA Today article that binge drinking is described as "four or five drinks in one sitting." We call that "settling in", but to each their own I guess.) The gist of the President's letter is that college students regardless of age are going to drink. Studies (that USA Today link) have shown that binge drinking actually decreases once a person hits the legal drinking age, so why not lower the legal drinking age to help curb excessive drinking.
It's an enlightened idea. Of course MADD got pissed and said that those colleges obviously don't care about the children and wouldn't enforce drinking ages. Which is hilarious because if they just read the study they'd know that the goal is to decrease excessive drinking. God those bitches are nuts. In fact they're so nuts, it reminded me of a certain local college's archaic stance towards alcohol.
A friend of ours alerted us to the newly revised university drinking policy which outright bans hard liquor anywhere on campus and limits the amount of beer a person can have to just a six-pack. (Scroll down to page 17) Drinking games have been prohibited. We also heard (but couldn't find anywhere in the "Tiger Lore" booklet) that for some random reason banned hookah. (For those of you who don't remember the hookah fad of 2004, hookah is flavored tobacco smoked in a bong-resembling water pipe by fictional catapillars and Persians.)
Trying to control alcohol consumption on a college campus is about as ambitious an idea as trying to tell basketball players to not fuck hot drunk girls, it just isn't going to happen.
What is going to happen? Attempting to limit the quality and quantity of hooch on campus is only going to result in off campus parties. So instead of some drunk stumbling across campus, you get and increase in drunk drivers on the roads surrounding The Island. College kids are going to drink. They're going to drink a lot. A half-assed attempt at prohibition is, according to that USA Today article we linked to earlier, only going to increase extreme drinking.
We're not saying UOP should just give up like MADD says the Presidents of Duke and Syracuse are doing. What we are saying is limiting drinks at the Lair to 3 or banning the drinks that actually get you drunk is just flat out ignorant.
Oh, and thanks to El Duké for the awesome headline. It's why he was brought on.
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