Dowdall asserts, that "prior high school drinking by itself is one of the most important predictors of freshman drinking" (58). Such an observation moves the sole focus of the national obsession with binge drinking's being a problem of higher education to its being a problem for the culture as a whole. It returns the gaze to the fundamental causes for a predisposition for binge drinking mentioned in the previous section. If the student was drinking before college, than the problem is not solely an effect of being at college. The problem lies just as much, if not more, with the parenting of the child. As Dowdall relates, "although there are many good reasons to focus on 'college drinking' as a national health problem [ . . .] we need to view early college drinking as embedded in the context of ongoing adolescent development" (43). Focus needs to turn toward successful parenting skills.
The second interesting result of the study is that it found a disconnect between student perception of peer drinking levels and their own. The Wechsler study found that students generally thought that other students on campus drank more than they did (Kellogg, 6). At a college:
Where the actual binge drinking rate was 43%, students indicated that their perception was that 69% of students participated in binge drinking. If students believe that "everyone else is binge drinking" than binge drinking rates are likely to rise because of the influence that "everyone else is drinking."
Whether it is accurate or not, the perceptions of drinking norms have a strong influence on current and future drinking behaviors and they eventually become self-full-filling prophecies.
(Kellogg,...
Binge Drinking Among College Students Individuals make numerous choices throughout their lives that shape the course of their future, both for the better and the worse. College is one of the first times most individuals face various challenges, both academically and personally. One of the most common decisions individuals struggle with during college is whether or not to experiment with alcohol and/or drugs. While most college students drink socially at fraternity
Finally, the research showed that while binge drinking practices have decreased among the larger population in the United States in recent years, there continues to be a high prevalence of binge drinking among college students that has created a great deal of concern among administrators, researchers and policymakers at all levels. The application of social bond theory to help explain this persistent prevalence among young people went a long
The question isn't whether there should be controls, but which controls work best. What has proven around the world to work best is a combination of reasonable laws backed by strong social sanctions. But in the U.S. we treat our emerging adults as infants and get infantile behavior as a result…if adults would learn to temper their patronizing attitudes toward young men and women, more maturity, self-restraint, and social
Accordingly, "the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that raising the drink age to 21 has reduced traffic fatalities involving 18- to 20-year-old drivers by 13% and has saved an estimated 19,121 lives since 1975." (T, 1) Conclusion: More than anything though, these statistics seem to confirm the fears of both university leaders and law enforcement agencies, who argue that age-based prohibition has made it more difficult to connect with, cooperate
The Problem of Underage Drinking on College Campuses Underage drinking on college campuses is a controversial problem because, on the one hand, universities want to provide students with the kind of independent living and respect they feel they deserve; on other hand, universities must take care to ensure that students living in dorms on the campus respect the laws and do not engage in activity that could be harmful to their
This means that alcohol is made accessible to underage persons and in this way, they start consuming alcohol at a young age. It is for this reason that the legal drinking age should not be lowered, but actually increased to reduce the chances of it being made available to those who are underage. Increasing the minimum legal drinking age to at least 25 years, like India, will go a
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