No, They Don’t have to Drink

College students sometimes drink alcohol even though they are underage. A shock, I know. And there are lots of ways to address or think about that situation, but the worst way is to say to students “We know you’re going to drink.” We heard the same thing at parent orientation for our daughter: “We know college students are going to drink.” Actually, we don’t. No, your student does not have to drink in college if he or she doesn’t want to, and even those who may use alcohol too much in college don’t have to become alcoholics after graduation.

The drinking age in all US states is 21 (with some minor exceptions for private consumption), and traditionally aged college students are 18-22, meaning that very few of the students are of legal age. Yet, on college and university campuses across the country, underage students are consuming alcohol and other drugs in defiance of college policy and state law and with little regard for the impact on their health. Why in the world would they do that? To get the sense to that situation, you can simply look at DUI statistics around the country and you’ll realize that the rate of DUI arrests for college aged students is higher than for many other age groups, but not much more than for the 25-34 age group. And there is some evidence that college aged students have higher rates of binge drinking, that is, drinking several drinks in a row to excess as compared to their peers who aren’t enrolled in college (National Institutes of Health, 2014). So it is natural and appropriate for parents to be concerned about their sons and daughters,.

Consuming alcohol while underage is against the rules at college and universities. But the colleges don’t focus on those rules if they believe students to be in distress because of. In fact, they strongly urge students to alert public safety or the residence life staff if a student is really in trouble, and the university then takes action with that student to make them safe. Colleges often provide a level of amnesty for the alcohol violation in this situation. This prevents students from being afraid to ask for help because they worry that their friend will get into trouble for drinking. The colleges and universities have it right on this one: getting students to safety is much more important than imposing a sanction for breaking a rule, however important that rule may be.

And make no mistake about it, if universities could effectively ban underage drinking and really ensure that it wouldn’t happen, they would. However, college students whose brains aren’t going to be mature until their mid twenties (maybe even longer for males) will race like crazy to find some way to get into trouble or take risks. And there is also the lure of off campus parties and social gatherings that aren’t sponsored by the university. So if students want to drink, they can easily walk a couple of blocks and get what they want.

Where some colleges fall down is not offering enough college social activities, especially on the weekends to engage the interests of those who choose not to drink. At our daughter’s university, there are activities on the weekend, such as bingo (who would have thought that college students would be into bingo?) but those activities seldom last beyond 10:00 pm, and often end earlier. This really isn’t late enough. Staff at those colleges say that no students want to stick around after that time, though I would counter that if they continued to offer the programs, they would see a slow growth in attendance that would make it worth their while.

So, no. Not all college students drink, and there are many like our daughter who get really annoyed when told repeatedly “We know you’re going to drink.” What we can do as parents is support those students who make the better choices whenever we can, and continue to put pressure on colleges and universities to do the same.