"I understand that the STATED purpose of the event is not "getting wasted". But an unstated and real consideration for people attending is the opportunity of having one or several drinks with friends. Not everything operates on the "stated" level."The author's point is all about this issue. Essentially, he's implying mission drift: the stated purpose of the event is being subverted, or even subsumed, by the unstated purpose (drinking). In his opinion, too much emphasis has been placed on the unstated, to the point where the stated is getting left by the wayside.
It's an interesting point, though it's very hard to prove, and the author weakens his argument with a lot of heavy-handed moralism of the "This has no place here!" variety.
Nevertheless, it's something to consider. When people drink at conferences, do they have to binge drink? And if a majority (or even a perceived majority) of attendees are indeed binge drinking, might that not exclude a fair number of hypothetical attendees who don't want to? It's not a stretch to think that a woman would be put off, or even physically intimidated, by the idea of being in a clear minority among a large crowd of young, drunk males. Similarly, older would-be attendees might opt out if they feel they're just going to show up to a glorified frat party. In the author's view, the problem isn't so much the presence of alcohol as it is an alcohol-centric conference culture.
The problem with this argument, of course, is its heavy reliance on subjective experience. One person's loud, annoying frat party is another person's good time. One observer's "everyone is binging" is another observer's "only a few people were, and they were embarrassing themselves." One person's "I felt excluded for being sober" is another person's "That's all in your head."
The best way to explore this issue is to get out of the subjective and into the empirical. I'd be very curious to see the results of polling among past and would-be attendees to gauge their feelings on this issue. For those who opted out, why did they? And what patterns emerge in their feedback? We'd probably run into some issues with sample size and selection, but something would be better than pure speculation.
We really have no place speaking on behalf of those who aren't present, no matter how small a minority they might be. (Cf. "tyranny of the majority" on Wikipedia or other sites.) The net solution probably isn't that every conference needs to go straight-edge. But at the same time, it's probably not the opposite: that everything is perfectly fine, and those who don't like it can go somewhere else. The author has raised an interesting point, and we should make an effort to hear from those who feel similarly.