An American university trips and stumbles into the obvious:
Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.
I know it's countercultural. More than 90% of college housing is now co-ed. But Christopher Kaczor at Loyola Marymount points to a surprising number of studies showing that students in co-ed dorms (41.5%) report weekly binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing (17.6%). Similarly, students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year—and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.
The point about sex is no surprise. The point about drinking is. I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up—and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up).
Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls. It will take a few years to complete the transformation.
Young people on the verge of adulthood but still lacking experience or judgment, when thrown together with little or no supervision, will make irresponsible choices? Who knew?
In the early stories about the disappearance of IU student Lauren Spierer, it was barely mention in passing that just prior to going missing, she was drinking with friends at "one of Bloomington's most popular bars" and, oh, she's only 20. But the campus's problem with alcohol is starting to get more discussion now:
As police and volunteers continue their search for Spierer, questions have swirled about how a young woman who isn't even 5 feet tall got into a bar and served alcohol in a city that Indiana excise police patrol more regularly than any other place in the state.
Indiana University's nearly 2,000-acre campus about 50 miles south of Indianapolis is a picturesque mix of tree-lined paths and limestone buildings dating to the late 19th century. The school touts top-notch academic programs, but it's also consistently ranked as a top party school by the Princeton Review, earning the top spot in 2005 and consistently making the top 15 since then.
Comments
Nonsense. My sister graduated from Vassar in 1969, and she still has a hangover. My wife graduated from Converse (SC) in 1979, and she hasn't fully sobered up. I should point out to you usual fans that both colleges are highly exclusive schools that are or were all-female.
And do you really think that all-male dorms won't feature drinking contests and other nonsense, regardless of whether women are present? My college was coed, but my freshman dorm wasn't. I vaguely remember quart-beer-bottle bowling and a drunken goat (literally) kidnapped from a nearby farm.
Ogden Nash may have been right when he wrote "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker," but he wasn't refering to male consumption, which, let's be honest, doesn't exactly improve our bedroom performance.
I've long noticed that drunk women find me attractive, a view that changes when they sober up and realize what a mistake they've made.
If college students haven't reached the age of majority before they matriculate, they probably have reached it before the end of their first semester in college.
The mission of a college shouldn't be to keep students sober and virginal. It should be to educate them.
If alcohol abuse is problematic on campus, the easiest answer is focus more on academics and less on athletics. There's a reason why beer companies sponsor athletic events, all the way from amateur slow-pitch and horseshoe pitching up to the NCAA Final Four and the Superbowl: athletes and athletic wannabees tend to be heavy consumers of beverage alcohol.
Little Place.....: Could you have found the reasion that your wife may be in, as you have stated, an "insecure job position"?
And, have you considered that "exclusive schools" my be quite different than the "non-exclusive" ones?