New Trends in Alcohol Education and Policies at Our Colleges

Many college across the United States are beginning to crack down on underage drinking, not to worry college students; they are only doing it to save face. The new initiatives include stricter penalties for drinking, taking on-campus bars off, and including either health education into the curriculum or starting an Alcohol Edu initiative for all new freshman and RA's.

Stricter penalties are now in effect for college Alcohol-drinkers and its true they are now clearer. However, rules against college drinking are just as unenforceable as they ever were. Stricter penalties on college drinking are pointless but it makes the college feel as if they are doing something. As for the getting rid of on-campus bars that's not where the binge drinking happened anyway. It hurts the over 21's that were so pompous that they did not want to go drinking themselves into a stupor. Good job college, you've accomplished exactly nothing.

My favorite of the initiatives is the only one that may have any effect. Alcohol Edu, I'm not sure when this website became the new ubiquitous campus program. Perhaps, it's free; I do not know I am not in the administration, however, we the college student body is forced to be subservient to these lukewarm programs.

These programs are meant to teach college students the equivalent of high school health class. When your health teacher told you that alcohol was bad and that you shouldn't be drinking that much or that it could hurt your liver, you got it. It's bad to go drinking (especially if it's to a drunken stupor level) but I think you get that about alcohol by now. A three-hour class online about college drinking, which you are certainly not going to pay attention to, will not teach you anything more than that. Especially for those of you among us college students that just don't want to learn about the adverse health effects of drinking alcohol. For those that actually find it informative, I'm going to guess that you were not going to drink before this or you are still binge drinking. So this three hour session sure helped you, the still-drinking, college student.