Three years later, I still can’t believe he said it.
“If you’re drunk, you might as well just not come home,” said my Resident Assistant (RA), Nick, during the floor meeting at the start of my freshman year. He made it clear that drinking wouldn’t be tolerated in Kennedy Hall and that he would strictly enforce the rules.
I’ve always thought RAs should do their best to make sure that students are safe (and, to be fair, in my three years in university housing I found Nick’s views on drinking to be no way the norm). Suggesting students shouldn’t come home if they’re drunk seemed 100 percent wrong then, and it seems wrong now. Residence hall staff certainly shouldn’t advocate drinking, but I believe that RAs need to foster a safe environment. That safe environment needs to acknowledge that alcohol exists, and some students will consume it.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, currently 36.2 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 20 binge drink. With numbers that high, people like Nick need to recognize students are going to drink and find ways to make them safer.
Nick’s philosophy represented a closed view of the world, and an ignorant one, too. It makes more sense to acknowledge that students are going to drink and find ways to encourage safety.
I started thinking about that floor meeting this week as abstinence became part of the national dialogue with the news that Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Palin is a supporter of abstinence-only sex education, but that doesn’t seem to be working, even under Palin’s own roof.
It seems that with both alcohol and sex, young adults don’t get important information when they’re told to abstain. I think it makes more sense for parents, teachers and role models to have a conversation that goes a little more like this:
“Now Johnny, I want to talk to you about sex. And drinking. I think you know that the only way to completely avoid getting genital herpes or knocking up your girlfriend is to abstain from sex. But if you do decide to visit Boom City, use a condom. And if you abstain from alcohol, you won’t irreversibly damage your liver or blackout, then do something you regret. But if you’re going to drink, know your limits and don’t drive anywhere.”
Sure, that conversation has the potential to be unbelievably awkward. But with more information, there’s less chance for embarrassing side effects and negative consequences. The choices to drink or have sex are, by their very nature, adult decisions, and people should be treated like adults when making them.
Whether it’s Bristol Palin getting pregnant or college students getting drunk, authority figures need to recognize that just saying “don’t do it” doesn’t do any good. Plenty of people will choose to abstain, but it’s na’ve to think they will do it just because their RA or their governor mother says to.
-Matt Collete can be reached at [email protected]
