A week ago I walked through the Harvestfest tent and witnessed two students selling “They say a Camel can go weeks without drinking” t-shirts. The back of these t-shirts features an anthropogenic camel carrying a funnel and a keg and exclaims “NOT THE CAMELS I KNOW.”
I do find these t-shirts amusing, but they are also deeply troubling.
After having a few discussions with SGA and administrators, I have decided to sign the Get REAL statement on alcohol culture. This statement condemns the effects that the change in legal drinking age has had upon college students and challenges students, administrators and elected officials to accept responsibility. If you talk to staff and faculty that have been at the college a long time, they will talk about a time when staff, faculty, and students would co-mingle in the bar. A time before hospital visits and dorm vandalism. A time when the point of a weekend night was to have fun and not to get shit-faced. What happened?
For reasons five minutes on Wikipedia can explain, the national drinking age was changed to 21. As a few new generations of students passed through America’s colleges, the emphasis on juvenile drinking behavior shifted from culturally acceptable socialization to banished criminal behavior. Underage drinking has now become a national epidemic. The number of hospital visits, sexual assaults, binge drinkers and deaths has increased dramatically in the last fifteen years. Connecticut College is a prime example.
Drunk driving has decreased nationally in the 25 years since the drinking age was changed. Our campus bar was established as an effort to encourage students to stay on-campus instead of driving back drunk from New London bars.
Since the drinking age was changed to 21, drunk driving on here at Connecticut College has increased. Why? Because in an effort to curb the epidemics listed above, the college has cracked down on underage students’ access to alcohol. Gone are the days of kegs and faculty/student parties. As a result of this crackdown, student drinking has moved off-campus. Students drive drunk back from off-campus underage-friendly parties. Students also drive drunk around campus, rationalizing that the distances are short, the terrain familiar, and the roads private.
As students, we must come to understand the consequences of our actions. So must our administrators and our lawmakers. Students, understand that the natural reaction to a decade long increase in hospital visits is a loss in privileges. Administrators, understand that when you tighten the rules, then more and more students will venture into the world of locked doors and pulled shades: where there are no rules, no leaders to lead and enough drugs to kill. By forcing adults to become criminals, we have created a monster. Why don’t we do something before another one of us dies? Students, understand that the law puts us in a difficult position, it puts administrators in a difficult position and it puts police officers in a difficult position. Also understand that they only people who can do anything about it are us. We have to take control of our behavior.
Since the Camel t-shirts were introduced two months ago, they have been seen by a multitude of campus visitors, parents and residents of our hometowns. Ask someone on the street who knows our school about the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Connecticut College. It’s not academic excellence, our Honor Code or liberal arts, what the leaders of this school want it to be. It’s drinking. Connecticut College has a reputation for heavy drinking. Every time you wear these shirts, realize that you are reinforcing this idea. I can tell you I’ve been to other schools and they drink more and throw way better parties. We rarely have keggers and I haven’t seen a funnel in a long time. When we have kegs and funnels, we lock them in our closets to hide them, just as we lock doors while we pregame. The t-shirts reflect a culture which does not exist here, but they do perpetuate a reputation that does exist. If you want to be treated like responsible adults who can enjoy a few drinks without punching out a window or blowing a .35 on the hospital gurney, than start acting like it.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Get REAL statement and the national movement to lower the drinking age, go here.
