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One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

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Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#11

Post by john_b »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start…

> "you would rather limit damage and trust peoples' responsibility"

True, but most American cultural pathologies are rooted in mistrust of others, a mistrust which is itself often rooted in one or more fears that derive from ignorance. When you are ignorant and fearful of a problem or a group of people, it's much easier to appeal to your government to do something about it rather than actually try to understand that problem or people. Trusting those people to be responsible is the last thing that occurs to you in such a state of mind.

All I'm trying to say is that this is a specific instance of a much larger trend which has been in place for a long time. I don't know how to fix it.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#12

Post by HarryHirsch »

robrenaud wrote: post #7
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start…

> Why not hand out serious prison time for first-time drunk drivers? It would increase road safety so much. Research suggests that you might be wrong. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/twitter-politics-drunken-... > Key quote: “Harsher sanctions to drinking and driving may generate no marginal deterrent effect if drivers’ perceived risks of receiving the punishments are low. Therefore, rather than escalating sanctio…

If the laws are on the books and applied in a non-arbitrary way the perception of DUI might change - after all you want people to be sober behind the wheel even when the police aren't looking. Unfortunately, in the US, you can't breathalyze everyone on a Saturday night, you have to have "reasonable suspicion". Which means that on weekends, the roads are less safe than they could be, I avoid driving on the weekend after dark.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#13

Post by basseq »

I went to UGA my freshman year. Compared to other campuses where the parties are at fraternities or private residences, Athens is a bar (and, as the article points out, a fake ID) town.

It was very much a wink-and-grin environment: the "bad photocopy job pasted onto a McDonald's gift card" description is very apt. Some bars were tougher than others, but for a guy, showing up with a favorable distribution of girls would cause the bouncer to look the other way.

It's obvious and egregious (UGA suspends open container laws on gamedays), but as the article's subjects and other HN posters point out, the problem is not bars and fake IDs, and more college students' drinking problems. (Which exist at fraternities, house parties, and other venues as well.) To that end, I laud the focus on safety, education, and one-strikes over just pushing the "scene" underground.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#14

Post by ics »

scott_s wrote: post #8
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start…

Blaming the drinking culture itself - that American kids aren't allowed to drink, and when they do, they don't know how - is a common sentiment. It has an easy narrative, and I think it may be true. But I've never seen anyone attempt to actually verify it. I can construct equally sensible narratives that have nothing to do with the drinking culture. I can also imagine it's not the drinking culture, but the fact that…

> I think they also tend to stay close to their parents for college

Which may also be influenced by the probability of 800 miles away being another country (with an entirely different language).

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#15

Post by mmanfrin »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #5
mlrtime wrote: post #2

"Even going to the tape, though, is not always enough. The mother of the guy in the Santa suit maintained that the police should’ve taken her son, who eventually passed out, back to his room, not to jail. Recounting the story, Mr. Williamson looks momentarily exasperated. He tried to explain, he says, that her son was safer sleeping off his drunkenness under supervision." It seems the LEOs cannot win when dealing wit…

Well, considering he's one of the three people arrested per weekend out of "thousands"... it's arbitrary and ineffective.

Three people arrested for doing things considered over the top (e.g. passed out on a park bench, breaking in to a dorm of the opposite sex) out of thousands of drinkers -- who they do not enforce drinking laws on.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#16

Post by geebee »

robrenaud wrote: post #7
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start…

> Why not hand out serious prison time for first-time drunk drivers? It would increase road safety so much. Research suggests that you might be wrong. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/twitter-politics-drunken-... > Key quote: “Harsher sanctions to drinking and driving may generate no marginal deterrent effect if drivers’ perceived risks of receiving the punishments are low. Therefore, rather than escalating sanctio…

This is a good observation, and reminds me of an article I read a while back about why the parole system works so poorly (it was a great article, sorry that I don't have the link).

The theory was that much or our criminal law system makes an assumption of a rational actor. A 1% chance of severe penalty would deter a crime where they payoff is minor (i.e.., the small chance of a severely punished DUI would convince a rational actor to call a cab).

But it doesn't appear to work that way. The article suggested that the best way to deter certain types of repeated criminal behavior are consequences that are swift, certain, and measured (in severity). Instead, what we have is slow, random, and severe. Supposedly, that does little to deter crime, but does a great filling up prisons and creating people who have a lifelong criminal history for job applications.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#17

Post by robkix »

saosebastiao wrote: post #9
robrenaud wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not hand out serious prison time for first-time drunk drivers? It would increase road safety so much. Research suggests that you might be wrong. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/twitter-politics-drunken-... > Key quote: “Harsher sanctions to drinking and driving may generate no marginal deterrent effect if drivers’ perceived risks of receiving the punishments are low. Therefore, rather than escalating sanctio…

Harsh sentances for murderers also very likely do not prevent murder. But they do keep known murderers in places where the exposure to potential victims is much lower. By doing so, we have a safer world even if we do not have a significant disincentive to commit murder.

And now you know why the US houses most of the world's prisoners [0]. This is the same thinking that brings the US security theater at its airports. Anything for safety, even if it only mariginally works.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/safe-communities-fair-sentences/prison-...

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#18

Post by saosebastiao »

robkix wrote: post #17
saosebastiao wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harsh sentances for murderers also very likely do not prevent murder. But they do keep known murderers in places where the exposure to potential victims is much lower. By doing so, we have a safer world even if we do not have a significant disincentive to commit murder.

And now you know why the US houses most of the world's prisoners [0]. This is the same thinking that brings the US security theater at its airports. Anything for safety, even if it only mariginally works. [0] https://www.aclu.org/safe-communities-fair-sentences/prison-...

We aren't the worlds largest jailor because we put murderers in jail. We are because we have made jailable crimes out of benign actions that do not harm other people. Drunk driving is not a benign action that does not hurt other people.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#19

Post by wwwwwwwwww »

Overdrinking is a problem that I only think is going to get worse until there's some serious changes made to how drinking is treated legally.

When I was in college, I was a part of my fraternity's "risk management" team, a group of brothers whose only job is to stay sober during parties, find people who had drunk too much or more commonly people who had completely blacked out and hush them off away from the alcohol or to a safe part of the house where they could be watched for signs of alcohol poisoning and kept safe from being taken advantage of.

If there's any one trend I've noticed while I worked risk management at those parties, it was that the more taboo it is to drink alcohol, the more that people binge drink it. It's always the students whose parents were the most uptight about drinking or those who couldn't purchase alcohol yet who were the biggest binge drinkers and most common to pass out. There was one period during which there was a university crackdown on drinking at fraternity parties, and the most noticeable thing during the crackdown was that people would drink a -lot- more.

The amazing part about it was when people turned 21, it was like they became seasoned drinkers over night. People who had problems pacing themselves during every party would instantly turn into a moderate drinker once their 21st had passed.

I think it would be very interesting to see some studies done on the taboo of drinking and whether it changes people's likelihood to overdrink, because it seemed with every crackdown measure the local police force took against drinking at parties, the problem only got worse.

Re: One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

#20

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

The solution to this is to start drinking beers with your kids at age 10. This way drinking will be the most uncool thing ever, and they'll grow up to be teetotalers.

Seriously though, we need a culture change. You can't tell them they can never drink, then turn them loose in another city by themselves and expect it to not be taken to extremes. That's pretty dumb.

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