Campus Hazing, Alcohol, and Helicopter Parenting
Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy
Reitman, J. (2012, March 28). Confessions of an Ivy League frat boy: Inside Dartmouth's hazing abuses. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-238604/
Key Points: The story of a former Dartmouth student and the hazing he endured and also took part in. Discusses the culture of Dartmouth and the extreme resistance to changing the drinking, hazing, and sexual assault abuses that happen on campus. The one person who spoke up to bring light to the subject might ultimately be charged with taking part in it. This discourages any type of future whistleblowing.
Quotable Quotes:
This “culture of silence,” as some on campus describe it, is both a product of the Greek system’s ethos and the shield that enables it to operate with impunity (Reitman, 2012, para. 8).
“The fraternities here have a tremendous sense of entitlement – a different entitlement than you find at Harvard or other Ivy League schools,” says Michael Bronski, a Dartmouth professor of women’s and gender studies. “Their members are secure that they have bright futures, and they just don’t care. I actually see the culture as being predicated on hazing. There’s a level of violence at the heart of it that would be completely unacceptable anywhere else, but here, it’s just the way things are.” (Reitman, 2012, para. 9)
"But whistle-blowers are almost always complex, often compromised outliers. And while moral outrage surely plays a large part in a whistle-blower’s decision to come forward, so may a combination of anger, revenge, hurt feelings, opportunism or financial benefit. The question, ultimately, is whether their questionable motivations or checkered past make their words any less credible." (Reitman, 2021, section 8).
Alcohol's Hold On Campus
The Chronicle of Higher Education. (2014, December). Alcohol’s hold on campus. http://images.results.chronicle.com/Web/TheChronicleofHigherEducation/%7B482edbb7-2967-4266-b2f6-ef3f8e70b62c%7D_AD-CHE-AlcoholBooklet-2.pdf
Key Points: Seven articles examining many college students' relationships with alcohol and the toxic and hazardous effects caused by this relationship. Articles also examine the response of the university and the college town in how they've tried to reducing binge drinking on and near campus.
Articles include:
A River of Booze: In one college town, some try to slow drinking, but alcohol culture rolls on.
Little Progress:
Two decades on, colleges still haven’t stopped students from binge drinking.
What's Working:
Four campuses pursue promising strategies to limit alcohol consumption.
Protecting the Party:
With talk of sexual assault, students look out for one another while drinking just as much.
Moral Responsibility:
If students have time to get drunk, colleges aren’t doing their job.
How to Be Drunk:
Euripides’ tale of Dionysus’ power should be required reading for incoming freshmen.
Alcohol on the Map:
On six campuses, the geography of liquor licenses presents different challenges.
Initial Thoughts: This article dovetails with both the hazing article above and the helicoptering parenting article below. I found it interesting that parents were upset with law enforcement for hauling their kid to jail for the night for passing out in public and being 3x over the legal alcohol limit. "Even so, the chief regularly fields complaints from parents, unhappy that he has locked up their kids and dismayed that they will have an arrest record. After he was called in several years ago by members of the university’s parents council, an influential group, he started requiring his officers to wear cameras. Now if parents complain, he offers to show them the arrest footage" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014, p. 4).
On p. 12 the article discusses Dartmouth's president Jim Yong Kim and his attempts to create a data bank of research on college drinking wanting a data-driven and public health approach to help curb college drinking (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014). But the way The Rolling Stone article above shares the story makes it sound like he wasn't interested in getting to the root of the problem—fraternities. Also, right above this section in the article on p. 11 it's mentioned, “Institutions of higher education are still really committed to the idea that if we just provide the right information or the right message, that will do the trick, despite 30 or 40 years of research that shows that’s not true,” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014, p. 11). I just found the connections between the articles interesting.
Quotable Quotes:
“As a culture, we’ve supersized. And we’ve taken it into our drinking" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014, p. 3).
"It wasn’t until they began to reframe the issue—that our institutional mission is to educate and provide a supportive learning environment”—that participating colleges saw the value in enforcement and control" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014, p. 14).
"Mr. Clapp, at Ohio State, wants to make a similar economic argument to college presidents. Those high dropout rates you’ve been wrestling with? The slacker students who study a little and party a lot? The liability risks you take allowing dangerous behaviors to go on? They’re not doing your campus any favors" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014, p. 14).
A Nation of Wimps
Marano, H. E. (2004, November 1). A nation of wimps. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/200411/nation-wimps
Initial Thoughts: I find it interesting that this article was written in 2004, years before smartphones and social media dominated our society—and college students' time. It also mentions student mental health problems have been on the rise since 1988. I mention that because my children are Gen Zers who grew up in the digital age and it's often I hear similar articles being written about them but mainly because of the proliferation of social media and screen time. Yes, they are still writing articles about helicopter parents. Yes, there are still helicopter parents. And while I own up to having strong tendencies to being one, I'm thankfully not married to one, so it tempered my natural inclinations to hover. I am, however, witnessing some serious helicoptering in university parent Facebook groups. From complaining about the cafeteria food, grades, dorm life, and even online versus in-person classes for their students, it seems there's always something for these parents to complain about. I often wonder if their student knows they are on Facebook complaining and asking for how to get certain situations taken care of for them. I know if that were me, my son would be embarrassed and tell me to back off. Thankfully, I am not on Facebook complaining ... just reading the complaints and knowing what not to be like ;)
Another thing I wanted to point out. My parents were most definitely not hoverers, nor were any of my friends' parents that I could tell. And yet, I still found myself binge-drinking in high school to find my way. I eventually stopped on my own as I began to understand how empty and fake it made me feel. I can relate with this statement: "It's an inverted world in which drinking to oblivion is the way to feel connected and alive" (Marano, 2004, The Fragility Factor, last para.) however, I wouldn't say it had to do with helicopter parenting for me (and that statement was made about binge drinking in the mid-90s right in the middle of my binging years). I'm not saying the helicopter parenting theory and how it may have lead to binge drinking is total bunk, I'm just saying it certainly wasn't the only factor.
This quote connects with what I've been thinking about since Tommy's college search began and ended and relates to some other articles I've been reading: "No one denies the Ivy League offers excellent learning experiences, but most educators know that some of the best programs exist at schools that don't top the U.S. News and World Report list, and that with the right attitude—a willingness to be engaged by new ideas—it's possible to get a meaningful education almost anywhere. Further, argues historian Stearns, there are ample openings for students at an array of colleges." (Marano, 2004, Just Whose Shark Tank Is It Anyway?, para. 3)
Quotable Quotes:
With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps. (Marano, 2004, 1st sect., last para.)
"Psychologist Paul E. Joffe, chair of the suicide prevention team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contends that at bottom binge-drinking is a quest for authenticity and intensity of experience. It gives young people something all their own to talk about, and sharing stories about the path to passing out is a primary purpose. It's an inverted world in which drinking to oblivion is the way to feel connected and alive." (Marano, 2004, The Fragililty Factor, para. 4)
"Anderegg finds that anxious parents are hyperattentive to their kids, reactive to every blip of their child's day, eager to solve every problem for their child—and believe that's good parenting. 'If you have an infant and the baby has gas, burping the baby is being a good parent. But when you have a 10-year-old who has metaphoric gas, you don't have to burp him. You have to let him sit with it, try to figure out what to do about it. He then learns to tolerate moderate amounts of difficulty, and it's not the end of the world.'" (Marano, 2004, Welcome to the Hothouse, para. 6)
The goal of parenting, Portmann reminds, is to raise an independent human being (Marano, 2004, Putting Worry in its Place, para. 2).
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