Red Cup Nation
December 6, 2014 10:37 AM   Subscribe

The student is lying on a public bench, at the end of a trail of vomit. He is unconscious; his front pocket gapes, a wallet falling partway out. An officer shakes him, and again, finally rousing him. “How much,” the officer demands, “have you had to drink?”

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education published a multi-part series about drinking at college:
A River of Booze: Inside one college town's uneasy embrace of drinking
6 Campuses and the Liquor Surrounding Them
Protecting the Party: With focus on sexual assault, students look out for one another while drinking just as much
Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Binge Drinking: Decades of attention without much difference
On Camera, Alcohol Is Central to College Experience
4 Campuses Respond to Risky Drinking
posted by Horace Rumpole (45 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think a rigidly-enforced drinking age is partially responsible for creating America's binge drinking problems.

Kids don't learn to drink responsibly before they leave home for college. Either they don't drink at all, or they do so illicitly. They don't have the opportunity to learn how to handle a drug that's actually really powerful. Then they go off to college, and for a lot of them, it's their first time away from home for a long period of time. So they're dropped into this environment where excessive drinking is celebrated, and they don't know how to handle their booze. Then they graduate college, and often the binge drinking continues, partly because they never learned a healthy attitude toward alcohol, but also because binge drinking is considered acceptable adult behavior well into one's thirties.

If teens learned how to drink as part of their normal development, with friends, sure, but also at home around family members, I suspect American drinking culture would be different.
posted by evil otto at 10:44 AM on December 6, 2014 [63 favorites]


Another thing is that binge drinking is sort of hegemonic within college culture, so even if you did grow up with a reasonable and moderate attitude to alcohol, you can still find yourself getting sucked into it.

I grew up in a culture and a family with a very European attitude to alcohol. I was drinking wine at dinner with my parents at twelve. I think I got drunk one time, somewhat by accident, before I left for college.

I went to a liberal arts school with a small campus and no greek life. But the entire social life of the school was still built around drinking. And specifically, at that time and at that particular school, drinking liquor/cocktails. Growing up in a beer and wine family, I hadn't been prepared for that at all and had no idea how to handle it. (Frankly, I still don't, and my reaction to bad experiences with cocktails has been to just stop ever drinking them.) I vomited up a lot of Bacardi freshman year. Luckily I was in a dense urban area where nobody was driving, and I was never one of those people who'd throw up and keep going.

But if a really straight-ahead nerd who already knew how alcohol worked could find herself binge drinking every weekend right out of the gate at college, I worry about the kids who don't have any of those defenses.
posted by Sara C. at 11:03 AM on December 6, 2014 [8 favorites]


In addition, the way we handle alcohol in the higher education system grants a lot of power to fraternities, because they're the only collegiate institution with de facto (if not strictly legal) access to alcohol in a party context. Give an institution like fraternities a monopoly over a heavily coveted good like illicit alcohol, and they will have a lot of social power as a result, regardless of whether their members are elite or middle-class. And as we have seen recently, the power fraternities attain this way is often misused. I don't think it's a coincidence that the nadir of fraternity power was in the 1960s, when Baby Boomers were rejecting alcohol as the intoxicant of "the Establishment" or "the Man" in favor of marijuana or LSD.
posted by jonp72 at 11:04 AM on December 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


"The Truman Dorm at George Washingon University, at the time the most expensive school in the US, also had the higest STD rate in the nation, the hallways smelled of vomit. I figured this defacto school of US diplomacy was a ground for breaking down all morays, all feelings of ownership of self or sanctity of self, in preparation for the life of politics and diplomacy. The drunkenness was just one tool in the process."

A concerned parent, at the time
posted by Oyéah at 11:11 AM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've only read one of the articles so far ("Protecting the Party") but it is a really interesting look at the ways the students profiled are both making serious changes relative to when I was in school and at the same time making sure that they are only making changes that preserve their ability to continue partying unchanged.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:18 AM on December 6, 2014


In addition, the way we handle alcohol in the higher education system grants a lot of power to fraternities, because they're the only collegiate institution with de facto (if not strictly legal) access to alcohol in a party context.
I don't know. This works differently on different campuses, but I think you're overstating things a bit. The articles look mostly at big state universities, and at those schools most students live off-campus after their first year. A lot of drinking goes on at parties in off-campus apartments and shared houses, not just in frats. I don't think that student social life is necessarily linked to formal collegiate institutions.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:19 AM on December 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


"I figured this defacto school of US diplomacy was a ground for breaking down all morays"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, young eels often have a notoriously difficult time acclimating themselves to the social pressures of American campuses.
posted by koeselitz at 11:53 AM on December 6, 2014 [43 favorites]


I figured this defacto school of US diplomacy was a ground for breaking down all morays

#notalleels
posted by The Tensor at 11:55 AM on December 6, 2014 [29 favorites]


Nobody is going to skip a party because the senior assistant vice associate dean for student life told them "Booze is bad, m'kay?" Parental notification and regular raids on dorm rooms only serve to drive the drinking underground and make getting help for a friend a fraught decision.

Outside a handful of extreme religious schools, no one would dream of holding college students to an abstinence only standard for sex, and there's a ton of information/education on safety and consent (imperfectly implemented to say the least). Colleges should concentrate on alcohol safety and make sure no one is punished when help is sought. (Coercion and hazing introduce some difficulties to such a policy but even then, you'd rather a frat bring a poisoned kid to the hospital than spend time weighing the risk of discipline and the likelihood of recovery).
posted by the christopher hundreds at 12:10 PM on December 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


A lot of drinking goes on at parties in off-campus apartments and shared houses, not just in frats. I don't think that student social life is necessarily linked to formal collegiate institutions.

But the Greek system is held up -- culturally, if not formally -- as the platonic ideal of The College Experience. Even counterculture depictions of college life (Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds) feature the "non-frat-guys" making up their own fraternity rather than simply not participating in the Greek system. So if fraternities have this essentially unfettered access to alcohol, then everyone else sees that (if unconsciously) as a key factor in The College Experience.
posted by Etrigan at 12:11 PM on December 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Even counterculture depictions of college life (Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds) feature the "non-frat-guys" making up their own fraternity rather than simply not participating in the Greek system.

Animal House is 37 years old - calling it 'counterculture' is laughable. It is a relic and totally irrelevant today.
posted by Setec Astronomy at 12:15 PM on December 6, 2014


Do you think this issue is less than 37 years old?
posted by Etrigan at 12:17 PM on December 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


It is a relic and totally irrelevant today.

If we had images, Belushi in his COLLEGE sweatshirt would have been the first or second comment in the thread.

It's probably just as well that we don't have images
posted by thelonius at 12:38 PM on December 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


Where da keg at?
posted by jonmc at 12:47 PM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


But the Greek system is held up -- culturally, if not formally -- as the platonic ideal of The College Experience.

Is it really? Between my junior and senior years of HS, I was taking some three-week courses at the University of Minnesota and someone asked one of the RAs what they thought about fraternities. "You mean paying for people to be your friends?" he responded.
posted by mr. digits at 1:20 PM on December 6, 2014


If we had images, Belushi in his COLLEGE sweatshirt would have been the first or second comment in the thread.

Yup. And when I went to see my cousin graduate from college last year, we visited her school store where there were versions of that pic in poster form, on mugs, shirts, all of it. Not quite as irrelevant as you might think.
posted by nevercalm at 1:26 PM on December 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Setec Astronomy: Animal House is 37 years old - calling it 'counterculture' is laughable. It is a relic and totally irrelevant today.

Animal House is the greatest brochure for going away to college ever made. A kid whos on the fence about going to community college for high school part deux or getting out of mom & dads house to live in a city of people your own age with non-stop parties, sex, and hi-jinks will swiftly make up their mind well before the end credits.
posted by dr_dank at 1:48 PM on December 6, 2014


Is it really? Between my junior and senior years of HS, I was taking some three-week courses at the University of Minnesota and someone asked one of the RAs what they thought about fraternities. "You mean paying for people to be your friends?" he responded.

The irony being that fraternities are massive at Minnesota. Not like Georgia Tech levels of massive, but big enough that grad students have "this is weird right?" conversations about how popular they are. (Minnesota's undergrad drinking culture leaves something to be desired, to put it mildly.)
posted by hoyland at 1:49 PM on December 6, 2014


A system founded on a breathtaking pile of hypocrisy doesn't actually work? Color me surprised. Prohibition of heroin doesn't work, and most of the people responsible for enforcing the prohibition never did heroin and honestly believe people who do heroin are worthless degenerates. By contrast, every enforcer of 21-year-old drinking age drank while underaged themselves, has no guilt or regret about, and doesn't think even slightly the less of someone else for doing it, either.

The strength of the Greek system has very little to do with their supply of alcohol. Alcohol is not in short supply for independents, and Greek-like social regimes continue to be very popular all throughout adulthood. The difference is that those lifelong regimes just aren't as in the face of the independents as fraternities and sororities are when they were in college.
posted by MattD at 2:25 PM on December 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


Critics of the drinking age of 21 have said that it promotes the collegiate shift to liquor, since that's easier to smuggle and conceal. Beer is much safer, for the inexperienced binge drinker, since you will typically vomit it up before you can really hurt yourself. Of course students are going to get legless drunk, but the kid with the .33 blood alcohol....that's not from beer, and being that drunk is a really miserable experience, and scarily close to the death area for BAC. (And his parents are claiming the cops should have taken him home, not to the ER!)

On the other hand, supporters counter, it has drastically cut drunk driving in 18-21 age group. But the societal campaign about drunk driving, with new, aggressive enforcement, started up around the same time they raised the age, so, I think, it is difficult to say how much 21 cuts drunk driving. It probably helps some.
posted by thelonius at 2:42 PM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Of course the beverage industry is making a huge difference with their campaign telling people to
Drink responsibly.



Do it a lot!
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:49 PM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


By the time I got out of my Montana high schoool, I'd slugged down enough Everclear to float a battleship. At my Ivy college, alcohol had sure didn't have the same allure for me as it did for my more sheltered classmates. On the other hand, at least two of my fellow hs seniors had died from drunk driving accidents. I'm not sure that a "European" attitude means much--there's plenty of binge drinking all over the EU.
posted by Ideefixe at 3:08 PM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


It might have changed since, but when I was at McGill it was almost invariably the American students who would have binge-drinking issues throughout their entire university time as opposed to just at the beginning of their first year (not that it was most American students, most American students did not have binge drinking problems, but most students with binge drinking problems were from the US).
posted by jeather at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2014


when I was at McGill

To some extent this is likely the confirmation bias of you taking notice of foreigners. There was a study on this topic a decade or so ago that found a higher amount of heavy drinking at US universities compared to Canadian ones, but the difference was a few percentage points. A noted variable was that more than half of the Canadian students lived with their parents. US students abroad could be outliers though.
posted by Winnemac at 4:06 PM on December 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


the christopher hundreds: "Colleges should concentrate on alcohol safety and make sure no one is punished when help is sought. (Coercion and hazing introduce some difficulties to such a policy but even then, you'd rather a frat bring a poisoned kid to the hospital than spend time weighing the risk of discipline and the likelihood of recovery)."

GOD, so, when I was in college I'd been to a party with a friend and I'd made her go home when she was suuuuuper drunk and some skeezy guys started hitting on her. They'd been manning the bar and pouring her HUGE screwdrivers that were 90% vodka, 10% orange juice. (I wasn't a real big drinker, and I was driving that night, so I hadn't had anything. This group of my friends were all pretty hard drinkers but they accepted my non-drinking as an amusing quirk and sometimes even a benefit as they had an all-time DD.) About half an hour after I'd gotten home and gone to bed, I got a phone call, and it was her and she was crying and she said she was throwing up so much she was afraid she was going to die and her dorm monitor hated her and she was afraid she'd get expelled if she went to the dorm monitor and what should she do?

So I go wake up one of my good friends, Kate, who's an EMT and ask her if she'll come with me, because I do not actually have a lot of experience with extremely drunk people or with first aid and I wasn't sure I'd know what to do. Kate knew my other friend just a bit but she got out of bed and put on clothes and we set off across campus at 2 a.m. and found my friend probably not in danger of death from alcohol poisoning (Kate ruled) but really, really dehydrated from all the vomiting and probably should not be left alone. So we talked about it and we talked to my drunk friend and we all agreed she should probably go to the hospital just in case, although my drunk friend insisted we take the back stairs so her dorm monitor wouldn't catch her and try to expel her.

OF COURSE the dorm monitor catches us and goes bat shit on us and tells me she's going to get me expelled for trying to sneak a drunk student out of the dorm. And I very firmly tell her I am taking my friend to the hospital and it's not any of her business. And she insists it is and we have to go to her office to get written up for drinking, and I say I'm not going to do paperwork when I need to get my friend to the hospital and that I am firm in this decision and if it is important I will come back tomorrow and fill out her paperwork. She's all "GIVE ME YOUR NAME YOUNG LADY AND TELL ME WHERE YOU LIVE." So I literally spell my name for her easier note-taking convenience, tell her my dorm manager's name, and give her my dorm manager's number, and we continue on down the stairs. And I'm just seriously like, What are you going to do, crazy bitch? I am 21, stone-cold sober, brought an EMT with me, and am taking a (21-year-old) student to the hospital. I feel good about going to campus court with this one.

So we take my friend to the hospital and they get her rehydrated and she was fine. We just hung out at the hospital and sat with her as we had nowhere in particular to be, and my friend Kate and I get home around 5 a.m. and go to bed.

At 8 a.m. my dorm manager, who is a nun, knocks on my door and I'm like "whuuuuuuut" and she comes in and she's like, "Sorry to wake you, but I got a call from Crazy Bitch Dorm Manager, did you steal a drunk student from her dorm last night?" "Well, sort-of, we had been at a party together and I took her home when she got drunk, and then she called me for help so Kate and I went over to get her and take her to the hospital. I was sober, I'd been driving." "Oh, taking Kate was a good idea. Did you sass Dorm Manager?" "... probably? She was kind-of being a bitch about the whole thing. Am I in trouble?" "She called me at 6 a.m. furious about your behavior, I promised I'd talk to you. Consider yourself talked to. Go back to sleep." "Okay Sister."

My poor drunk friend got 50 hours of community service from her crazy bitch dorm manager for disobeying an order from an administrator, though (the order to come fill out paperwork about how she was in trouble). The intervention of MY dorm manager kept my drunk friend from being thrown out of dorm housing because MY dorm manager pointed out that you can't really punish 21-year-old students for drinking legally and then behaving responsibly when they realize they're drunk and calling sober friends and seeking medical attention.

But JESUS GOD no wonder people preferred to choke on their own vomit than get past that crazy-ass gate keeper to get medical attention, especially if they were underage.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:42 PM on December 6, 2014 [26 favorites]


“How much,” the officer demands, “have you had to drink?”

"How often," obiwanwasabi demands, "do you cleave sentences asunder this way?"
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:52 PM on December 6, 2014 [8 favorites]


Re the "FRATS ARE EVERYTHING"/"FRATS ARE IRRELEVANT" conversation, it's worth mentioning that a lot of big state schools have populations the size of a small city. To the people who are in certain circles, it can feel like everyone is involved with the greek system. Meanwhile, at the same school, other people might barely be aware of them.

Two of my three brothers went to the same big party school state U. One was in a fraternity and that pretty much set the course for his entire college experience. The other mostly went to LAN parties and AFAIK never crossed paths with a frat bro or sorority chick except maybe in a one off class outside the comp sci department. There was plenty of alcohol available in both settings.

In my experience of college, access to alcohol and tendency to binge drink had nothing to do with greek life at all. I guess there might be a bible study group out there somewhere full of teetotaling college kids, but it's omnipresent.
posted by Sara C. at 5:25 PM on December 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


Hell, I went to a tiny, 2,000 student school, one with a very active Greek system (but no national groups, the frags and sororities were literally only at this school) and if you weren't in the system, during spring rush, all their parties were closed. I went to maybe two frat parties in my four years there. Other than that, I went to house parties by people totally uninvolved in the Greek system. Totally doable, even at small schools.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2014


I think a rigidly-enforced drinking age is partially responsible for creating America's binge drinking problems.

Maybe. I mean, seriously, it makes sense.

But the UK and Ireland have reasonable drinking ages of 18, they have substantially higher binge drinking rates (among all adults anyway, WHO didn't report for college students) than the US does.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:32 PM on December 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Alcohol is a problem across the
Nation, not just in Colleges. If anything, the crazy binge drinking on college campuses actually teach people where their limits are, which comes in handy at the company Christmas party or the 2nd grade parent potluck.

I'm not saying what happens on campus is good, I'm just saying there is a general culture of "partying" or "getting fucked up" which exists across the nation and not just in college that should be addressed.

Frat guys and sorority girls often go from university to positions in finance and other high pressure jobs which have their own Getting Fucked Up culture, and you can see how the college experience can train you for that world. Those who don't Get Fucked Up miss out on certain nuances of the job, and those who can't handle their liquor get mocked.

Again, not saying this is good, but saying let's place alcohol abuse on campus in the context of alcohol
Abuse in the US In general.
posted by chaz at 6:42 PM on December 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


I went to a Seven Sisters school - 2500 students, all female, no sororities/secret clubs/closed parties permitted, all students (except townies and some seniors with financial need) lived on campus. Every dorm had an optional social fee; if paid, ALL campus parties were open. If one chose not to pay, most alcohol-serving parties were off-limits. The state drinking age rose from 18 to 21 my freshman or sophomore year; the Ivy men's college (with whom we had reciprocal party entrances) nearby went coed and closed their frats about the same time. Gigantic state U in the area has frats/sororities to this day. The state banned bar happy hours and discount drink specials at about that time, as well.
I noticed no changes to binge drinking on campus by straight students - it was ubiquitous and remained so. Amid dykes, since most of our public parties and dances were dry for budget reasons, booze bingeing went down but pot smoking rose. I did notice less off-campus/driving while intoxicated.
Last time I visited the school, people seemed to be drinking and organizationally hosting fewer large or elaborate parties. There was a lot more dorm room and small private party drinking and a wider variety of (private) drug use. Public binge drinking seemed less common. I think it's a combination of cultural shift, wider availability of other drugs, and economics. A higher percentage of students now receive financial aid; they most likely can't afford to overindulge every weekend compared to when less than 20% of us had scholarships. Also, the academic load seems even harsher than in my day - too many binges would affect one's grades since studying all weekend, not just Sunday nights, seems the current norm.
posted by Dreidl at 8:20 PM on December 6, 2014


I'm really glad I graduated before the Red Cup Nation bullshit started. The guys from Schmacked talking to those girls looked like massive Delta Bravos.
posted by glaucon at 7:00 AM on December 7, 2014


I think a rigidly-enforced drinking age is partially responsible for creating America's binge drinking problems.

True, that. And we can blame that on Elizabeth Dole back in her days as Secretary of Transportation. Her big deal was drunk driving, and her solution was raising the drinking age. Her means was threatening to cut off federal funding to any state which did not raise the drinking age to twenty one. The supreme court upheld the deal.

Funny thinking coming from the party of individual liberty and states' rights.

As to college - Back to basics. Ban co-education, return the age of legal adulthood back to twenty one, and demand colleges again take the role of in loco parentis seriously. You want to drink? Sherry with Professor Fiddlefaddle.

Just a thought.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:06 AM on December 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


IndigoJones, is that a serious proposal?
posted by d. z. wang at 8:59 AM on December 7, 2014


That still wouldn't work.

Want to know how college students get alcohol, more often than not? Make friends with a student who is 21+. Which is dead easy, since that's a junior or senior. If classes have started up and Freshman Orientation is over, you know someone who can buy you whatever you want. And there's no real law against it, zero chance of anyone getting caught, and no real consequences if you do.

The only way to use more restrictions to prevent college students from drinking would be to raise the drinking age to 25, so that it's not at all on the radar of college aged people.

Or you could go the opposite direction and lower the drinking age to 14-16 and let kids get it out of their systems under parental supervision.
posted by Sara C. at 11:28 AM on December 7, 2014


I compare chaz and sara's remarks and agree with sara.


chaz: Frat guys and sorority girls often go from university to positions in finance and other high pressure jobs which have their own Getting Fucked Up culture, and you can see how the college experience can train you for that world. Those who don't Get Fucked Up miss out on certain nuances of the job, and those who can't handle their liquor get mocked.

or...the college culture is carrying over into early adulthood, and so the GFU maintains until people have others who are really depending on them, and then they stop. Or they don't, which is the beginning of tragedy.


sara c: The only way to use more restrictions to prevent college students from drinking would be to raise the drinking age to 25, so that it's not at all on the radar of college aged people.

Since you have to be 25 to rent a Mustang from national rent-a-car or not have the teenager stupid-tax tacked on to your insurance, then why not this?

Is a buzz delayed a buzz denied?
posted by lon_star at 11:44 AM on December 7, 2014


I live it Athens GA, the college town profiled in the first article, and it's not a Greek thing to binge drink--it's all of college culture. To say, like jonp72 did, that fraternities are the only institution with access to alcohol proves that you didn't read the articles linked. The plethora of bars, the ubiquity of fake IDs, the culture of football and tailgating, the normalizing of extreme drunkenness--in all that, Greek life is is just another thing. In the case of Athens, stricter policing of fraternizes actually led to the boom in bar life downtown.
posted by feste at 12:29 PM on December 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Or you could go the opposite direction and lower the drinking age to 14-16 and let kids get it out of their systems under parental supervision.

The problem with this is that binge drinking and heavy alcohol use are a problem even in countries where alcohol tends to be introduced earlier. Universities in the UK have an enormous drinking culture, with massively cheap drinks often available from college bars, even though the drinking age is much lower than in the US. Binge drinking is on the rise even in countries like Italy, possibly impacted by changing cultural norms influenced by tourists-- parental supervision can only do so much, and I think it's unrealistic to see it as a cure-all for this. I agree that the US's drinking laws contribute to the dangerous culture of drinking on college campuses, but they aren't the only factor at play.
posted by jetlagaddict at 12:45 PM on December 7, 2014


Personally I think that the legal drinking age is irrelevant, as shown by the facts you cite. I know lowering it wouldn't change anything, but I think the ubiquity of Getting Fucked Up culture among teens/young twentysomethings worldwide proves that this isn't a problem that can be solved by making a new rule or two.

To be 100% frank about what I actually think the solution to this is, I think there's no solution and we just have to accept that college students will drink to massive excess. And then just damage control the shit out of it. Set up designated driver services or van pickups or bus routes back to campus. Make no-questions-asked policies in residential life, campus security, and the health center, so that students who potentially have alcohol poisoning can seek medical attention and nobody is afraid to call the authorities when sexual assaults or fights happen. Campuses should be doing whatever they can to make drinking less traffic, not to eradicate drinking.
posted by Sara C. at 1:56 PM on December 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


I know, from online, some college students who have gotten sober, and they have a hard life. Their major issue is that college social life is totally centered around drinking. Like, people won't even have meaningless sex unless they are drunk first.
posted by thelonius at 4:37 PM on December 7, 2014


I agree that the US's drinking laws contribute to the dangerous culture of drinking on college campuses, but they aren't the only factor at play.

I wonder how many of these kids are self-medicating? I think it will be interesting to see what happens to the drinking rate in states where it's now legal to buy pot.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:40 PM on December 8, 2014


IndigoJones, is that a serious proposal?

Depends. How seriously is anyone willing to consider it?
posted by IndigoJones at 1:12 PM on December 9, 2014


I think it will be interesting to see what happens to the drinking rate in states where it's now legal to buy pot.

In my state where pot was just legalized, the lawyers at the university just sent out a memo saying pot will still be illegal on campus, since after all it's still a federal crime. Not sure what they've done in Colorado.
posted by leahwrenn at 11:21 PM on December 9, 2014


"On campus" is not very relevant at many state universities, because almost all partying goes on off campus.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:44 AM on December 10, 2014


"On campus" is not very relevant at many state universities, because almost all partying goes on off camp

It's also not very relevant in that even when pot was both against campus rules and against state law, plenty of people still smoked up on campuses. Mostly campuses don't have any choice except to issue statements saying "pot is not ok" because they don't want to jeopardize their federal funding, but I can't imagine it being an enforcement priority anywhere except maybe at some religious schools.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 AM on December 10, 2014


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