In social psychology, there are phenomena known as prescriptive and descriptive norms. For example, a prescriptive norm is the fact drinking alcohol is not legal until age 21, but the descriptive norm is the knowledge that every Thursday night, you will most likely find underage drinking in college towns.
It’s unavoidable: drinking in college is more of a norm than an exception. According to the Washington Post, more than 80 percent of college students drink and almost half reported binge drinking.
The simple truth is, as students venture out of their hometowns and into college, they’re entering a period in their lives where exploration is imperative. The majority of them will experiment with alcohol as a part of that exploration.
The University does attempt to educate students on responsible drinking before they arrive on campus. But with the popularity of binge drinking, the warnings universities try to instill often go ignored.
This board has argued before that the drinking age should be lowered but it also acknowledges there are several flaws in that solution. The punishments for being caught violating the alcohol policy of the University are harsher, but stricter punishments are not likely to lead to long-time behavioral change.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as “a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration up to 0.08 ... this typically occurs after four drinks for women and five drinks for men in about two hours.”
Due to the fact underage drinkers opt for fraternity houses instead of bars, they’re likely unaware of the actual alcohol content in their drinks, making it far easier to binge drink. It’s not that the act of drinking itself is inherently bad — it’s that through exploration and trial and error, students are testing their limits to sometimes dangerous levels.
Because students are testing these levels, it’s important to acknowledge safe drinking techniques. Though it’s arguably more important to remind students that there are resources available to them if and when their experimentation with drinking presents a medical emergency.
The Board and this University both realize that preaching alcohol abstinence will do little to curb the excessive rates at which college students drink. That said, the safety nets UNC has put in place to minimize casualties at the hands of this unfortunate truth should be celebrated. More importantly, though, they should be utilized.
