Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow deserves high praise for finally going public with his concern about his binge drinking students. Apparently all it took was walking to his office at 3:3o in the afternoon and finding an unconscious student sprawled on his lawn before being taken to the hospital to have his stomach pumped.
Pretty hard to ignore! But why wasn't he concerned about the previous 15 of his students who made the same trip to the hospital for the same reason or the 60 - SIXTY! - students who made the trip by the end of the school year? Well, at least he finally got the message. Most college presidents simply sit on their hands and ignore it.
But his solution to the problem, as outlined in this Boston Globe article, "Presidential sobriety check" is so outrageously arrogant that it's hard to believe. After binge drinkers return from their sojourn in the emergency room, Bacow invites them into his office for a little one-on-one session where he will personally convince them of the error of their ways. He talks to them, he says, as he would talk with his own sons.
Forget the counselors the college has hired to do this. Forget the decades of research on this problem that have been conducted a few miles away at Harvard. Forget all the efforts to meddle with the drinking age and to change the social norms of campus life. Dr. Bacow will personally solve this problem all by himself, as he tearfully told the Boston Globe reporter.
Forget it, Dr. Bacow. You can bet those kids will be right out in the streets with their red plastic cups as soon as they get the chance. Talking will not change the campus drinking culture. It took years for colleges to be recognized as a place where binge drinkers can safely practice their lifestyle with no fear of interference. In-the-know high school drinkers know they can count on colleges to cover for them while they drink themselves into oblivion.
The solution to the binge drinking problem is very simple one. Just say no! Just toss them out! The same students that Bacow singles out for his therapy sessions are the ones the president should throw out the door. Then announce what happened and why. Then add the message that if you want to engage in this kind of behavior you will have to do it somewhere else. Not here!
Why don't colleges adopt this simple solution? It's because college administrators are so concerned about "retention" of tuition paying customers that they are afraid to take any action that would damage the bottom line. Tossing out paying students, even ones that are dangerously immature, is just not an option. What if the college got a reputation as "unfriendly to drinkers"? What would that do for enrollment?
College presidents need to take a hard line on this. Until they do they can expect the problem to continue with all the dead students and failed lives that result from it.
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