Michael Martin Essays - Drinking Culture, Alcohol Abuse,

Michael Martin Professor D. 11/30/1999 Hum. 101 A world of intoxification Screams pierced the midnight air and students ran wildly about the campus. Police cars whizzed by with their sirens blaring in the night. Glass was being broken and girls were being defiled. Confusion was all around and no one could stop it. This is an average night at any given university in America. The similarities between a horror story and a story about a college party are too many. At an average college party where alcohol is being served there is the possibility of fights, rape, death, destruction, and jail time. The common opinion in America is that all of these things are bad. So why do college students continue to engage in these activities? There are three reasons. First, if students have not been exposed to alcohol or drugs previously, when they get into that kind of environment, they will experiment. Secondly, if everyone else who is important, i.e. fraternities and sororities, does it, then to be important, you must drink. Finally, without parent instilling morals and g ood judgment into their children, the students do not think that it is wrong to participate in these activities. All in all, the biggest problem on college campuses is the consumption of alcohol and drugs. If a person was never exposed to the heat of a flame their whole life, and then was thrown into a family barbeque, where they asked this person to cook, how well would they do? They would probably put too much lighter fluid in the grill. Or, they would light the grill while looking at it to see what it did. Or, they would light the grill and then put their hand on it to see what it felt like. All of these things would cause extreme pain to the person who did this. But, would it be their fault? Would it be their fault that they didn't know how combustible lighter fluid was? It wouldn't be their fault if they put their hand on it and singed the flesh off of their hand. It wouldn't be their fault because they were never exposed to it. The same thing can be said about drinking and drugs at college. If the person was never exposed to alcohol or drugs and they were thrown into a place where people engage in these activities on a regular basis, of course they would experiment. But, just as the person with the grill did, the college students will get hurt. They will drink too much. They will drink too much because they don't know how much is too much. The only way to avoid this happening is for parents to talk with their children from a very small age and tell them the good and the bad effects of alcohol. Parents are the most important part of a person's life. You are with your parents for at least 18 years of your life and you talk to them for the rest of their lives. It is the parents' responsibility to tell their children the horrors of fire. The parents tell their children not to touch the stove because it will burn them. Why do these same parents neglect to tell their children the horrors of the cause of over 90% of college crimes? Why do they neglect to tell their children that alcohol rips families and people apart? Why do the same parents that pull their children from the road and tell them to look both ways, and then toss them to the college wolves with no knowledge of alcohol? These parents do this because they don't know how to talk with their children about these concerns. The parents think that their children are the smartest people on the planet, and that they will figure it out on their own. Well, they do figure it out on their own, with the help of the more important p eople on campus, fraternities and sororities. Once mommies little boy, or daddies little girl get to college they become as little babies again. Looking at a whole new world in which they live. This isn't the quiet town in which they grew up, it is a world in which if you are not important,