Stories this week:

AlterNet contributor Shelly Rollison called Legal Age 21 “a band-aid over the real problem” of toxic drinking in her latest post. She wrote, “One of the best definitions of insanity I’ve ever heard is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time. The laws on underage drinking aren’t working. It’s not deterring kids from drinking: they’re just finding ways of doing it that aren’t likely to get them busted.”

Cary Carr, a Temple News commentator, collected stories of fellow students’ drunken mishaps and used them to illustrate the reality of alcohol consumption on her campus: “For a lot of college students, the weekend means partying, and partying involves drinking. Whether it is in a crowded basement reeking of cheap vodka and bodily fluids or at a bar with obnoxiously loud music and an even more obnoxiously growing tab, college kids are getting drunk.”

John Shelness of Des Moines, Iowa is not pleased with the direction of alcohol policies in his community. He responded to a Des Moines Register story about college binge drinking by sketching out the unintended consequences of enforcement crackdowns: “To fix the damage done to the lives of young adults by these overzealous regulators is simple. Reverse the failed policies that currently guide alcohol use for young adults. This neo-prohibitionist approach drives college students off campus and underground into dangerous and unregulated social settings where it is easier to buy, transport and hide hard liquor.”

In other news…

A coalition of departments and organizations at the University of Nevada – Reno is using grant money to develop late-night entertainment programs for students that will give them other options besides large parties that are focused on goal-oriented drinking.

Justin Graham, a resident of Evansville, IN, believes that the recent underage drinking raids conducted by the Indiana State Excise Police are counterproductive time-wasters: “Harm reduction efforts would be much more effective at alleviating the potential dangers of alcohol than heavy-handed enforcement that will ultimately never work. Even if it made sense to use the force of law to prevent young people from drinking, and even if it were at all possible to do so, a drinking age of 21 makes no sense whatsoever.” What do you think?

If we missed an important news item in this week’s update, leave us a tip in the comments section.

“We cannot deny that the drinking age does affect a significant portion of the Boston College community as it forces many freshmen, sophomores, and even upperclassmen to ‘binge’ drink or ‘pregame’ behind closed doors because they cannot drink in controlled, socially healthy environments such as restaurants and sporting events…

…If alcohol consumption is seen as a natural part of life, instead of as something illicit and negative, then future generations will not see its abuse as a rite of passage. Rather, it would be a more seamless transition – not one necessitating the consumption of a life-threatening amount of alcohol.”

Check out the rest of the editorial and leave your feedback in the comments.

“This decision comes after a long discussion about possible policy changes to Spring Fling, partially prompted by last year’s event, which was declared a mass−casualty incident due to the high number of students requiring medical attention for alcohol poisoning.”

Not all students and community members are convinced that the ban will work to reduce binge drinking, however. One Tufts senior told the Daily, “Students aren’t going to stop drinking just because the university isn’t allowing it to happen.” Wicked Local Somerville contributer Meghann Ackermann argued that the change may simply shift the location and intensity of the drinking prior to the event: “I’d be willing to put a fair amount of money on the likelihood that a lot of people will be showing up to Spring Fling already tanked.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Stories this week:

Tuscon Citizen contributor Carolyn Classen believes it may be time to consider a lower drinking age that would bring the consumption of alcohol by 18-20 year-olds out of the shadows. She wrote, “I am advocating the choice of being able to drink alcohol, which can be done in moderation in the privacy of one’s home, or not at all– if you choose not to drink for religious or health reasons. And I don’t think anyone should drink over the legal limit & drive a motor vehicle. It would certainly eliminate the sneaking around and binge drinking that American college students go through to drink alcohol for 3 years before they turn 21.”

Marc Ferris of the Fairfield Weekly offered a blunt statement on the difficulties of enforcing Legal Age 21 in his article on local binge drinking incidents: “Trying to stop underage drinking among college students is like shoveling sand against the tide.”

Drake University Times-Delphic columnist Ryan Price doesn’t think Legal Age 21 is working very well. Why did he choose to take up the issue? “The reason I am writing about the drinking age today is because I am worried about the friends we have taken care of after they drink to oblivion. I am writing because I appreciate our peers’ health. I am writing because I want to see mature handling of alcohol in our society. I am writing because we can kill others for our country, but we can’t have a beer as we write research papers on the complexities of pharmaceutical drugs, business ethics or quantum physics.”

In other news…

Maryland lawmakers have ruled out an increase in the state’s per-drink alcohol tax to fund services for addiction treatment programs and other initiatives, according to the Washington Post.

Iowa City’s proposed 21-only ordinance for local bars has the community buzzing. The University of Iowa’s Faculty council has endorsed the plan, but Daily Iowan columnist Beau Elliot and the paper’s editorial board argue that the proposal won’t do much to change behavior. What do you think?

Remember: today is the last day of voting on Change.org, so help us crack the 1,000 vote barrier before the contest closes!

Check out Tyler O’Neil’s article in the Register and let us know what you think in the comments.

“If anyone wants to effectively combat the problem of binge drinking, humiliation is not the way to go…Saying that underage drinking is illegal and binge drinking is dangerous does not make the problem go away, in the same way that humiliating someone who is binge drinking will not make that person stop.

Simply telling people who have a hangover that they should be ashamed of themselves is not effective; treating the source of the problem is. How many partying college kids even know that what they’re doing is considered ‘binge drinking?’ Setting a realistic threshold, and making sure people are aware of what they are doing, may help kids keep their drinking totals down. Letting kids know that drinking to solve other problems is not appropriate or effective is better than shaming them into changing.”

Which types of these advertisements do you think are the most effective? Let us know in the comments.

Stories this week…

On Monday, The Partnership for a Drug-Free America released some discouraging new statistics: between 2008 and 2009, rates of past-month alcohol use among high school students increased by 11%. “I’m a little worried that we may be seeing the leading edge of a trend here,” said Sean Clarkin, the organization’s Director of Strategy.

In the past few months, we’ve received several reports of increasing alcohol-related hospitalizations on college campuses. We can now add Harvard to the list, thanks to a story in Monday’s edition of The Crimson. According to predictions by Harvard’s Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services, the number of students seeking treatment will reach 200 by the end of the term, “a 43 percent increase in the past two years, marking an upward trend after a period of stabilization from 2005 to 2008.”

The Iowa City Council is considering a new ordinance that would make 21 the legal age of entry into local bars. According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The University of Iowa supports the proposed change, but the editors of the Daily Iowan aren’t convinced. They wrote, “Raising the age of bar patrons wouldn’t address the root problem with downtown Iowa City: overconsumption, a factor not entirely congruent with age.” What do you think is the proper solution?

In other news:

A new study that will be published in the Journal of Marketing Research found that in some cases, anti-binge drinking public service advertisements which use guilt and shame to affect viewers may backfire and actually increase binge drinking. Check out Advertising Age for more details.

The editors of The Spectator at Seattle University endorsed a recent medical amnesty proposal put forth by their student government. They wrote that this new policy could be a small part of a much larger solution to the problem of toxic drinking:

“While there can be plenty of arguments made both for and against the Good Samaritan policy, it is important to recognize the overlying problem: an abundance of not only underage drinking, but drinking to the point of dangerous intoxication on college campuses. The Good Samaritan policy is not the end-all solution to this prevailing problem; rather it is only a step in the right direction toward decreasing this dangerous behavior.”

What do you think of this proposed change?

New York Times “Motherlode” blogger Lisa Belkin picked up the recent Washington Post story on parental notification policies at colleges and asked her readers to weigh in on the issue. Check out her post and leave some feedback.

Remember: cast your vote on Change.org if you haven’t done so already, and leave us a tip in the comments if we missed something in this week’s update.

This week, we learned via the US News “Paper Trail” blog and the Daily Collegian that these pleas went largely unheeded, and the weekend saw a record number of arrests:

“The Daily Collegian reports that 160 partyers were arrested this past weekend. That’s more arrests than were made during the previous two State Patty’s Day weekends combined. Must have been a big weekend in State College.

‘The trend seems to be going the wrong way,’ State College Police Capt. Dana Leonard tells the Daily Collegian. ‘Everything is upward trending in the past three years–calls are up, alcohol overdoses are double. It’s a disturbing three-year trend.’”

Do students on your campus host similar unofficial holiday events that are characterized by heavy drinking? Let us know in the comments.

“The excessive nature of college drinking is normalized into our culture and has turned into something we don’t even question anymore. When we guzzle down drink after drink, we are inducing memory loss and we are putting ourselves, our health, our relationships, even our lives at risk! Yet, every weekend, we start again, just waiting to see who blacks out next—immune to the consequences.”

Does her account match up with your experience on your campus or in your community? Let us know in the comments.

Stories this week:

Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post examined recent changes in parental notification rules for underage alcohol violations at colleges at universities across the country. Jameson wrote, “Schools have found themselves in a delicate balancing act. Officials want to protect students’ heath and honor parents’ demands for information, but they also want to help students develop a sense of independence.” What do you think is the appropriate policy?

Two Dallas Morning News articles caught our eye this week. The first came from local high school student Kelsey McKinney, who took a snapshot of the toxic drinking culture in her area and concluded that a lower drinking age is necessary. The second was a roundtable discussion involving the members of the Morning News editorial board, who debated this week’s Washington Post parental notification story. Debate moderator and Assistant Editorial Page Editor Nicole Stockdale argued for a lower drinking age: “My first problem is that the drinking age should already be 18. Treat adults like adults.”

In case you missed it earlier this week, check out the Associated Press report on a disturbing trend at Midwestern colleges: drinkers create “shot books” to commemorate their 21^st birthdays, with one shot for each year represented.

In other news…

Legislators in Utah are considering a partial medical amnesty bill for underage drinkers who seek emergency assistance for intoxicated friends. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the bill is intended to prevent situations similar to the one in which Utah State University first-year Michael Starks passed away after a night of heavy drinking in 2009.

A panel of student affairs administrators at New Hampshire universities discussed the issue of underage drinking in higher education on New Hampshire Public Radio. You can listen to the conversation here.

BC Heights columnist Joseph Pasquinelli took on the issue of the drinking age again this week. He wrote, “The current drinking age makes using alcohol illegal for most college-age students, but this does not stop them. It will only make their behavior more secretive and irresponsible. In order to foster an environment where this ‘experimenting’ can be done responsibly and treated as an opportunity to learn how to drink like an adult, the drinking age needs to be lowered to at most 18.”

Leave us a news tip in the comments if you found an interesting item that we missed, and please remember to cast your votes for our Change.org idea on Monday afternoon!