Our
View: Education needed to curb binge
drinking
When two college-aged
men wander past the power tools, grab
a funnel and clear plastic tube and bring
them to the front register, savvy Home
Depot employees know these young customers
don’t have
a plumbing problem.
When a pair of giggling college-aged girls meanders to the front of Sports Authority
with a pack of the cheapest ping-pong balls available, all the while excitedly
gossiping about “what’s going down tonight,” clearly they’re
not talking about some ultimate table tennis championship.
Clear plastic tubes, funnels and plastic balls may not share any relevance to
an older generation, but students today are likely to know how the three items
relate. And that is what worries everyone else.
A series of articles in the Nov. 18 edition of USA Today gave an exposition of
the modern college consumption scene.
USA Today said an increasingly health-and-safety-conscious boomer generation
has become more concerned with the potentially dangerous consumption of alcohol
in university life.
As a result, some schools have begun to ban alcoholic beverage ads in sports
events. This, they believe, will help curb the amount of harmful alcohol-related
incidents plaguing campuses today.
As if students who choose to drink do not already know the prominent American
brands. Do university administrations or advocacy groups against drinking think
if Budweiser cannot fly its flag above the football stands kids will abstain
from drinking?
It is a stretch in the wrong direction, a horrible misstep for a touchdown in
the wrong end zone.
Banning companies from advertising will not help. It will only lead to a substantial
loss in much-needed revenue.
Schools like Colorado State have a long-standing relationship with the prominent
state brewer, Coors, which provides the university
with high revenue.
Students there will drink, even if Coors is not allowed to advertise. The result:
the school loses money, Coors saves a little advertising expenditure, but still
profits from selling beer and the kids still get drunk. Everybody wins–except
the school.
Cal State Long Beach does not have this problem. The Walter Pyramid advertises
alcoholic beverages and even sells beer at games, a practice more and more schools
are opting out on.
CSULB makes cash both offering advertising space and selling cups of beer, resulting
in profits. If more schools did this instead of alcohol abstinence, they could
take in cash without wasting the effort to curb an inescapable college pastime.
So then, how can other campuses and CSULB help promote safe drinking?
The answer is not banning alcohol. This only makes beer or cocktails an even
more tempting forbidden fruit.
The answer is not disallowing companies like Miller to advertise at games. This
loses money for universities and dodges the problem.
The answer is not stopping tailgate parties, a longtime tradition suddenly ceasing
at many universities nationwide today. This just puts a damper on fun and could
cause people to drink elsewhere privately and, perhaps, unsafely, free from a
scrutinizing public eye.
The answer is education, a term any university ought to know well. Tell students
the realities of ethanol, shed light on the drug and promote safe drinking within
limits.
CSULB has already taken some good steps to help. The Alcohol, Tobacco and Other
Drugs program (ATOD) run by Student Health Services is a noteworthy example.
Also, this year CSULB Housing provided small notes on the desk of each dorm room
printed with the potential signs of alcohol poisoning.
This particularly small, inexpensive effort to educate students about the signs
of unsafe drinking is exemplary. Many residents have that note displaying prominently
somewhere in their rooms as a small token that could someday help another resident
or friend in trouble.
But these efforts are not enough. CSULB should be instituting alcohol safety
tips in mandatory courses like University 100. Currently, for students not on
campus or who have never attended an ATOD meeting, the only alcohol tips given
compulsory to all students are paper inserts during SOAR or campus advertisements.
Perhaps a lack of alcohol education is due to a kind of alcohol phobia plaguing
not just CSULB, but much of the United States. This originates back to our rigid
Puritan heritage, and has certainly not helped to promote safer consumption.
The high drinking age of 21 and nationwide booze fear is the root of the college
drinking problem. Fresh out of high school and beyond direct parental supervision,
students will go hog wild because there is freedom to do so.
This is the sad reality universities must deal with, and because the drinking
age will not be lowered any time soon, nor will America’s inherent attitude
toward alcohol change, education is the key.
Teach them to drink safely or if they so choose, not to drink at all. To this,
the Daily Forty-Niner raises its pints and soda cans for a better tomorrow.
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