Reaction to Binge
February 11, 2010 at 8:52 pm 16 comments
Evaluate the arguments and information presented in Binge. How accurately does it reflect student cultures?
Entry filed under: Uncategorized.
16 Comments Add your own
Leave a comment
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
Alcohol on Campus 
1.
bigred15 | February 16, 2010 at 1:58 am
The chapter from Binge offered a certain degree of sensationalism on what, to an average college student, is a mundane reality. Some aspects of the narrative accurate captured and portrayed the behavior of a vast majority of students. Sadly these more accurate characterizations were overshadowed by the ubiquitous presence of dozens of anecdotes that illustrated the most extreme and tragic behavior.
First, focus on the accuracy of the article. It accurately described the reliance on hard alcohol in the dorms, often because of strict drinking regulations in college residence halls. Students do drink vodka and other spirits regularly before embarking for the night because access to alcohol, especially for those underage, is highly regulated. Although not exclusively a phenomena among females, many either refuse or are highly averse to drinking beer or wine. This, coupled with the unavailability of cocktails and spirits, does sometimes lead to overconsumption of alcohol. Additionally, the author was correct to note the numerous incantations of Beer Pong that appear on different campuses. Personally, one of the most intriguing aspects of visiting friends from other colleges is learning all the intricacies and rule variations. Also relatively accurate is the role drinking games play in the college mating ritual. While the term “pong mating ritual” disagrees with my sensibilities, drinking games serve as great conversation starters. Drinking traditions also are very prominent. While only touched on with UVA’s fourth year fifth, each campus has at least one day expressly dedicated to drinking, partying, and general debauchery. These traditions are beloved by the student body and are often the climax of the semester.
However, the anecdotes quickly become extreme, described with sensationalist vernacular, and uncharacteristic of the drinking culture. Examples where individuals drank anywhere from 16 to 30 shots is not the norm and is a rare occurrence. Sadly, many examples of fatalities were also included. It is important to note that every activity carries with it a risk of death and that millions of students drink yearly with no adverse consequences. Particularly disturbing was the mention of the date rape drug GHB being used to supplement the effects of alcohol. Insane examples such as these really don’t reflect the true drinking culture on college campuses and only fuel the hysteria about irresponsible students. Overall, these illustrations of irresponsible behavior are not indicative of the drinking culture and serve to weaken the author’s paper. Students normally drink in moderation without these negative and life-altering consequences.
2.
Sharon | February 17, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Binge drinking is an epidemic that is propagating on the college campus – it “is hardly a new phenomenon.” Binge drinking is defined as the act of consuming copious amounts of alcohol during a short period of time. Some of the consequences of binge drinking are hangovers, vomiting, and even death. The article Binge addresses several factors that play a role in binge drinking, such as social and peer influences and Greek life.
There is evidently a drinking culture that prevails on college campuses nation-wide. More college students probably know how to play “Kings” than a good game of chess. Oftentimes, individuals are unaware of how much alcohol they are actually consuming when they are playing a game. In the article Binge, the author notes that Jessica, a freshman at Hamilton College, was engaged in a drinking game and unknowingly drank an equivalent of 22 one-ounce shots and ended up in the hospital. Speaking from personal experiences, one of my close friends ended up at the local hospital after chugging a large bowl of vodka, whiskey, beer, and soda after losing a game of “Kings.” He lost consciousness that night and suffered from acute alcohol poisoning.
Binge also explains the role that Greek life plays in binge drinking. Greek life is dominant in many universities, including Cornell. Pledges often participate in rituals, traditions and initiations that involve alcohol as a rite of passage. In the article, the author cites a hazing ritual at the University of Maryland that resulted in unconscious pledges who consumed a 40-ounce bottle of Hurricane malt liquor and slugs of Jim Beam bourbon. Since there is a certain sense of prestige and elitist title that is attributed to being Greek, pledges often endure the intense hazing – even at the expense of their own life. I have heard stories from other schools, especially in the South and in Cornell’s history in which pledges have died from consuming large amounts of alcohol to prove their worth or “brotherhood” for their fraternity.
Finally, many students drink alcohol because it “breaks the ice.” Alcohol tends to make every situation more comfortable and turns the most awkward person into the most social person. The article does a good job in illustrating how alcohol acts as a therapist, providing individuals with a feeling of confidence – they “go beyond the limits of their personalities, competence, and experience.” With a little help from the alcohol, an individual can go beyond his comfort zone with ease.
Though Binge offers a plethora of experiences of binge drinking gone bad, sometimes I question how accurately and fairly does this portray the student culture that exists? Though the majority of the population have not died or suffered from alcohol poisoning from playing drinking games, there are people who have; not all fraternities force their pledges to drink copious amounts of alcohol and not everybody binge drinks to feel more comfortable about themselves. Though some of these occurrences have happened to some of my friends and friends of friends, it is definitely not an accurate sample of the entire college drinking culture at large; many of the reasons that students drink are addressed truthfully in the article as well as some of the experiences, but the article fails to acknowledge that there are responsible and abstinent drinkers on campus. Several students do engage in binge drinking and have suffered the consequences of it, but there is definitely a large portion of students who practice abstinence on campus or only consume a few drinks a night. The author did do an excellent job in gathering experiences of the extreme consequences of binge drinking, but it failed to include anything about more responsible drinkers, which are probably more dominant on campus than the binge drinkers.
3.
Chelsea Blake | February 17, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Chapter five, entitled “The College Alcohol Crisis,” in Barrett Seaman’s book Binge, does not accurately reflect the student drinking culture on college campuses. It is evident that the author is writing as an adult spectator, who is not actually immersed in the college culture. This chapter reflects more of the stereotypical “college drinking life” that is often emphasized and embellished in the media. Contrary to Seaman’s argument, the majority of college students do not put themselves in danger by drinking obscene amounts each weekend. It is evident that this book was written for the “shock-value,” as I personally was frightened and shaken-up after reading many of the alcohol-related horror stories that were highlighted. However, being a college student, I know that this these stories do not reflect the norm, as I personally have never witnessed an alcohol-related death among any of my peers. The reality is that most college students do not drink enough to harm themselves. In fact, it is extremely rare for a student to die from alcohol consumption or the secondary effects of alcohol. As a result, the anecdotes presented in the chapter did not present a valid representation of the college drinking culture. These horror stories, which are intended to evoke alarming reactions, are exposed in the media because of their infrequency. I was personally shocked by these anecdotes because they are not the norm.
Nevertheless, some of the information and descriptions Seaman presented does reflect the student culture. As Seaman conveyed, students today do pregame with hard alcohol in order to sustain a buzz for the night. College students also participate in various drinking games at fraternity parties. However, his critical tone while describing these activities implies that the drinking behavior on college campuses today has gotten out of control and that there exists a strong need for reform. I do not believe that the majority college students drink an unhealthy amount and that the culture as a whole has become increasingly precarious. Seaman’s book is intended to generate terrified responses and therefore, his attitude, anecdotes, arguments reflect atypical circumstances rather than the norm of student culture.
4.
fashionfab12 | February 18, 2010 at 4:58 pm
The alcohol chapter in Binge starts out with a vivid story of a girl who was in “mortal danger” because she consumed way too much alcohol and smoked weed. Precisely, Jessica took twenty-two shots of vodka limone. Starting the chapter off with this horror story causes those who are unacquainted with the college drinking culture to believe that it is composed of reckless students who drink so much that they are at risk of dying.
Personally, none of my friends, who are mostly fraternity and sorority members, have ever consumed twenty-two shots of hard liquor nor have they ever been taken to the hospital because of their irresponsible drinking behavior. It is true that incidents like the one presented in the beginning of the chapter do occur. However, they are not as prevalent as Barette Seaman makes them seem. Seaman states that “hospitalization for alcohol overdoses has become a regular feature if weekend life.” I think that this assertion was highly exaggerated. Hospitalizations and unfortunate drinking incidents do occur, however, they do not occur to everyone. My friends study hard, do their homework throughout the week and go out on the weekends to unwind. They never even think of drinking twenty two shots of hard liquor because they know that it could cost them their lives.
My main critisism with the alcohol chapter is that it did not include one story of a regular college study who drinks three or four beers at a fraternity party, has a good time with his friends and gets home safely. That is what happens to most people who consume alcohol at college.
5.
cam352 | February 18, 2010 at 7:39 pm
The excerpt from Binge gives insight to a world of college horrors. It tells stories of a girl who take over twenty shots, a boy who dies from a keg stand, and drinking traditions that have turned deadly. But how often do these horror stories actually occur? From my personal experiences, most, if not all, college students do not drink to the point of death or even to the point of hospitalization. Seaman seems to exaggerate these occurrences in this chapter and although death and hospitalization from drinking too much does happen, it definitely is not a common weekend occurrence.
I thought that the example of the University of Virginia’s senior tradition was very interesting. My best friend attends the University of Virginia and on his fraternity’s initiation night, he participated in a drinking tradition specific to that fraternity that almost killed him. His heart stopped and he was sent to the hospital. If his friends had not been there to watch over him and been savvy enough to realize he needed medical attention, he may not be alive today. It seems to me that drinking traditions–whether school wide or specific the Greek system–may cause more problems than a typical Friday or Saturday night out. I think it would be very interesting to further explore the topic of drinking traditions and its correlation with student hospitalizations and death.
6.
ilrob2 | February 19, 2010 at 12:56 am
As a journalist, it is clear that Seaman bends the student drinking culture into a “college alcohol crisis” by using biased concentration on the dangers of drinking. He makes college nightlife out to be breeding grounds for several alcohol overdoses and deaths, for his goal seems to be to convincingly frighten parents that their children are currently living in death zones. Seaman’s approach is extreme, and he obviously does emphasize the horror stories of college life by explaining incidents of alcohol poisoning and death. While one should not take these stories lightly, there are definitely other aspects.
For me, I have personally encountered the effects of the culture presented in Binge. As a high school student, one of my best friends was actually killed in a drunk driving accident. Since then, I have seen a few friends become very sick from alcohol – senior prom in which my good friend called the ambulance for a girl passed out on our party bus, freshman year of college in which the ambulance again had to be called for a severely drunk friend. These tragic events are real, scary and sad, but they are not by any chance representative of the drinking culture. It took me a little while to realize this, for I was timid in high school when the only connections I had with drinking culture were those of tragedy. Once becoming a part of it, however, I have realized that they are freak occurrences that every so often unfortunately do occur because of someone’s stupid decision.
In Binge, Seaman fails to represent drinking culture because he concentrates too much on these freak occurrences. In reality, yes, college students may pre-game hard with liquor to get drunk before they enter the world where it is illegal to drink under 21. However, death by alcohol does not occur in this little 30-minute pre-gaming window. It will occur throughout the entire night if one person is stupid enough to keep drinking. Note: most students are pretty smart and know more or less what their limits are and when to stop. It is those few kids who continuously drink too much that run into these sad incidents. If Seaman had presented his horror stories with a balance of the more typical, moderate and un-eventful night out that no-one likes to hear about, he would have had a more consistent and correct piece of work even if it did not sell as many copies.
7.
Nate Lee | February 19, 2010 at 6:05 pm
In the article “Binge,” Barrett Seaman uses an argument technique that is self-detrimental to its purpose. Barrett Seaman asserts that college drinking has gotten out of control, and that it needs to stop. Barrett Seaman describes a series of terrible drinking occurrences and he gruesomely details them in order to support his view that college drinking is now at a “binge epidemic.” Essentially, the author uses scare tactics to spur parents and administration into action, while at the same time, to freeze college student’s desire to drink, for fear of such consequences. This scare tactic that Barrett Seaman uses will not only prove to be ineffective, but also, detrimental.
College students will not read these stories and suddenly decide that drinking is evil and stop drinking. These stories are the most extreme cases out of thousands, and students know this. The stories that Seaman presents are not representative of the student drinking culture. Students know, and experience, drinking behavior constantly and know that these situations are extraordinary and often a result of poor decision making. Most students believe that they are in control of their drinking habits and will not get themselves into these situations. In effect, these stories will not cause much reaction because students cannot resonate with them.
On the second front, rallying parents and administrators into action will only make matters worse. This so called, “binge epidemic,” exists in the first place because our society has created a culture where drinking has been pushed underground into hiding. Creating further restrictions and stricter punishments on drinking will not stop student drinking. If anything it will continue to push drinking underground and exacerbate the problem. Barrett Seaman gives many examples of Universities new regulations on drinking, however, these types of “fixes” will do nothing more than make things worse.
8.
br277 | February 19, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Binge could have been written in any time period. Authoritative adults who lament the decline of culture have always existed. In Binge Barrett Seamen criticizes the nature of drinking in college and claims that it has become a serious problem.
Barrett Seamen has a talent for telling a sensational story. He tells many effective shock and awe stories. Although I believe he is successful in writing an entertaining narrative, his analysis is unbalanced. A more balanced analysis of college drinking might be less entertaining and might sell less books but it would be more reflective of reality. Tragic stories about college students who die in wild, alcohol related incidents are certainly horrific. However, to imply that the actions of students who die during reckless incidents are reflective of the actions of normal college students is unreasonable. It is true that there are many parties in college. However, people usually drink with a reasonable amount of restraint and with a sense of rationality. It is also true that when students have work or responsibilities to attend to, parties and drinking are often skipped and work gets done. Most college students do not consume deadly amounts of alcohol and don’t take obscure drugs to get drunk faster. Some people may do such things but those people are not normal. The fact of the matter is that some students have terrible judgment and others suffer from alcoholism. It is crucial to recognize that only some people have those problems and that it is unreasonable to suggest that many college students fall within the category or troubled binge drinkers.
Seamen cited some of the intense efforts that colleges have made to curb drinking on campuses. I think it would be more productive and reasonable for colleges to take a more nuanced approach toward the issue of drinking in college. Schools should seek to reduce poor decisions that involve drinking by making a serious effort to educate all students about the dangers of very extreme drinking. Schools should also develop support programs for students with legitimate substance abuse problems. Those two actions would likely prevent many of the tragic stories that Seamen included in his chapter.
9.
starburst1113 | February 19, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Barrett Seaman, in his article, “Binge”, discusses the escalation of the ‘binge crisis’ across college campuses in America. His main arguments are that binge drinking has increased within the past several decades across college campuses and that it has reached a near-epidemic level. Seaman uses a variety of anecdotal stories to support his claims, mainly horror stories of binge-drinking gone bad.
In terms of accuracy, I do not think that Barrett Seaman accurately reflects student cultures today. Although I am sure that the stories that he presents in his article are true, they are by no means reflective of the typical college student. For example, he discusses the dangers of binge drinking by referring to a college student who died from doing a ‘keg stand’. The student did not die from the alcohol consumed through the keg stand, but rather falling down in the process. His supporting information in no way relates to the danger of imbibing massive amounts of alcohol or ‘binge-drinking’. Death from keg stands is extremely rare and in no way reflects the danger of the drinking culture of college students. It was a mere freak accident similar to falling down the stairs and dying, but helped to support Seaman’s over-exaggerated and alarmist article.
The typical college student drinks responsibly or not at all. The stories and information that Seaman presents in his article feeds off of society’s impression of the college culture and peoples’ worst fears of student cultures. No one wants to read an article about how responsibly most students consume article. Rather, it is horror stories and freak accidents that grab attention. This type of attention was exactly what Seaman was looking for in compiling his arguments and supporting information, rather than accurately reflecting the real student cultures.
10.
cornellstudent | February 19, 2010 at 10:13 pm
The chapter entitled “The College Alcohol Crisis” in Barrett Seaman’s book Binge: What Your College Student Won’t Tell You can be classified as a sensationalistic stretch of the average undergraduate student’s drinking behavior. While Seaman accurately identifies why students drink (to be social, break the ice, etc.) and some typical traditions of a modern-day student, such as pre-gaming, drinking games, and thirsty Thursdays, he portrays truly abnormal consequences of these activities as commonplace. As a result, the selection leads an unknowing parent or college administrator to the false assumption that college most students drink in an extremely reckless fashion.
Early on, Seaman describes the evening of Jessica, a Hamilton College student who wound up in the Utica hospital emergency room after rapidly consuming twenty-two one-ounce shots to vodka during a drinking game. The portrayal of Jessica’s ordeal paints a faulty picture that she was a casualty of a run-of-the-mill drinking game, when the exact opposite is true. A drinking game where deadly levels of alcohol are consumed in such a short period of time is uncharacteristic of any drinking game I have experienced. In addition, one who consumes twenty-two shots of vodka without knowing how they will react is both an inexperienced drinking and an individual who must not have paid much attention in middle or high school health classes. No matter how intoxicated or inexperienced with alcohol one is, they usually know when to stop drinking by assessing how much they have consumed or how they are feeling. Even in a situation where one is incapable of assessing how much is too much, peers monitor one each other’s drinking (especially in the context of small drinking game) and cut someone off when they have had too much. Bearing this in mind, Jessica’s situation cannot be categorized as normal because self-control and peer control would prevent a trip to the emergency room the vast majority of the time. The same logic also applies to Samantha Spady, the Colorado State student who perished after consuming thirty drinks in eleven hours.
In an attempt to underscore how problematic alcohol on campus has become, Seaman states that fourteen hundred alcohol-related deaths occur on college campuses annually. While any number of preventable deaths is undoubtedly tragic, this statistic plainly illustrates that despite the countless horror-stories regarding alcohol on campus, the number of students who are killed as a consequence of irresponsible behavior (indirectly or directly) is still relatively low. Considering the thousands of U.S. colleges, millions of students, and large portion of students who drink, this number would be far larger than fourteen hundred if the average student drank in the manner Seaman suggests.
Holistically, Seaman points to some social structures that seem to go hand in hand with irresponsible drinking (fraternity initiations, the fourth-year fifth, etc.), but falsely portrays unlikely outcomes of normal student drinking activities as par for the course.
11.
davidrostowsky | February 19, 2010 at 11:32 pm
The chapter from the book Binge by Barrett Seaman examines college drinking and student norms that were observed. I believe that this chapter was a highly inaccurate representation of typical college drinking. To me, it appears as though Seaman went to some lengths in order to find the most outlandish and unique stories. While these individual anecdotes were horrifying in their own way, they are a very small sample size to the college population as a whole and cannot be seen as an accurate predictor for general behavior.
While Seaman correctly portrays the reasons as to why college students drink, he claims that the new style of drinking has changed and points to outrageous examples to illustrate his point. For instance, the case of Samantha who was a sophomore at Colorado State University is the extreme of must drunken cases. The chapter states that Samantha had roughly thirty shots over the course of the evening with a BAC of .43. Taking thirty shots is the extreme; rarely on a typical night to students drink this amount. In my own experience it is rare to hear of students having upwards of ten drinks over the course of the night. While Seaman does show the potential harm in alcohol he attempts to scare parents and others into thinking that the new drinking culture is solely that of reckless drinking. Seaman contends that different school rituals promote this low responsibility towards drinking. Among other things he cites fraternity hazing and the four-year fifth as rituals that cause unsafe drinking. While these events do encourage drinking and can potentially harm one, no one is forced to partake in these events and the vat majority of those who do participate are completely fine and have no issues.
This chapter in Binge aims to scare the public at large of college drinking and hopes to encourage preventative measure at most universities. By only citing extreme examples however, Seaman does not accurately depict the typical drinking habits of a typical college student.
12.
jssy123 | February 19, 2010 at 11:33 pm
“Historical and cultural twins, drinking and college are jointly celebrated in son g, lore, and literature.” Barrett Seaman presents his point of view on a heavy drinking behavior of college students in Binge. He depicts the drinking culture in college by showing examples. Pre-gaming is one of recent drinking culture that can be found in the college life. Since fraternity parties rarely provide hard liquor, students tend to drink before they go out so they can sustain a buzz for rest of night. College students are likely to drink heavily when they hang out with friends and away from home. It is not just because students are away from their parents, but they drink more in order to fit into their social group. Therefore, one’s drinking behavior is largely depending on drinking behaviors of peers. The social norming, the influence comes from peers’ behavior, creates a large part in drinking culture. Drinking alcohol allows students “to break the ice, to oil the engines of sociability to enhance confidence and to stifle inhibitions” (115). Playing drinking game is another easy way to blend in within the group.
I believe Barrett Seaman has made few important points on college drinking behavior. However, he argues that binge epidemic is spreading all over country, which now becomes uncontrollable. He provides several extreme accidental cases from binge drinking and tries to generalize these cases as a cultural norm in the college. “all of which were thrust upon him and his fellow fraternity pledges in a hazing ritual at the University of Maryland. It was not until the following day that Reardon was taken to the hospital with a BAC of 0.579 – enough to kill a horse” (110). There are other million incidents when students drink under controlled and safe behaviors, so assuming these extreme examples as common incidents seem irrational.
13.
djh279 | February 20, 2010 at 1:18 am
The excerpt from Binge struck me as agenda-driven and heavily anecdotal. Throughout the chapter the reader is bombarded with horror stories of teen alcohol consumption taken too far. The author tries to draw a primitive trend line between the past and now by stating, “I drank when I was at Hamilton… But until that incident, I had never seen anyone so drunk that they needed to be hospitalized.” He decides an anecdote about college men using GHB to “get themselves drunker quicker” is not good enough as a standalone, and inserts adverb ‘perversely’ as a modifier. GHB’s iconic status as an accessory to rape calls into question the though process that went into this word choice, as ‘perverse’ is commonly used as a word to describe inappropriate sexual behavior, tendency, or thought. Such techniques in writing have always bothered me, as they reek of a reliance on shock value and emotional manipulation. From the cover of the book and the subtitle, “what your college student won’t tell you”, I conclude that the target demographic for this writing is parents and guardians of college age students. If parents can be made to fear for their young, they become vulnerable to logical half-leaps and emotional manipulation.
Any serious attempt to analyze the purported college alcohol crisis would involve interpretation of relevant data. Author’s, however, is admittedly scarce, as he writes, “My attempts to find objective data to back these anecdotal recollections proved futile.” Such a sentence removes any pretension categorizing the chapter as meaningful social science work. The chapter does accurately represent aspects and excesses of student culture. But it does not paint a broad or balanced picture, nor does it attempt to, as the main goal appears to be the perpetuation of the ongoing crisis meme. Nor is the concept of proportionality with regards to these excesses even mentioned.
(Consider the following to be a posttext, lest I overrun the word count limit.)
The author used language that clearly categorized alcohol as a drug, as he referred to the student seeking a ‘high’ in the opening anecdote and taking ‘hits’ of vodka. This impressed me; the phrase ‘drugs & alcohol’ has long bothered me, as alcohol is as much a drug as any other.
I do hope that this is not unfairly scathing, as all I read was a sliver of the entire work, which may or may not paint an accurate portrait of the aggregate.
14.
norain471 | February 20, 2010 at 1:46 am
While Seaman does have an interesting story in his work, the motives as well as his facts are certainly skewed. College students do illegally consume large amounts of amounts of alcohol, but to suggest that this is a new phenomena is both unfair and inaccurate. The examples provided in the story are the extreme cases of students who were unable to drink responsibly, but these do not portray accurately what the typical college student does on any given Friday or Saturday night.
The motives of Seaman may not be corrupt, but journalism is always filled with biases. I think the methods which he uses to compare drinking cultures with students during his college days are very questionable. Seaman makes light of drinking in his time by commenting on how most adults would drink during their college days, but would only drink beer. Most students, however, drink most of their liquor at the beginning of the night during the “pre-gaming” session, and then switch to beer when they leave to go out. Seaman provides the example of the fourth-year fifth at the University of Virginia. This event is hardly new, however, and is a tradition that has been done by seniors at the school for many years.
I think it is also important to note that the examples in this story are the most extreme cases of college drinking. While there is certainly hazing that occurs on college campuses throughout the country, all of these students made personal decisions to drink. I have personally never drank to the level that any of these stories suggest I would since I am a college student, nor have any of my friends, either from Cornell and from my high school. While Seaman presents and interesting story of how he perceives college drinking to occur today, I find it both difficult to relate to these stories, and generally misleading.
15.
John Parker | February 20, 2010 at 10:19 pm
I guess I had difficulty understanding the argument in this chapter because it was hard to find. He makes very deceptive steps in his writing and doesn’t give that much good evidence to support his thesis, which I assume is that there is a new phenomenon in college drinking culture called “binge drinking.”
If his thesis is that college drinking has changed fundamentally and that students are endangering themselves, then his argument was poorly supported. He spent most of his wrote about was drinking horror stories and current stats on college drinking, both of which are irrelevant because he doesn’t frame them in the context of drinking history. He’s trying to prove that this thing called binge is new and yet he admits himself that there no stats on college drinking before the 90’s. Without past stats then the current stats are meaning if he is trying to prove that there has been a change, so it seems that most of his argument is anecdotal. To compensate for his lack of hard evidence (statistics), he assaults the reader with a litany of unconnected student drinking accidents and random information on college drinking rituals. Essentially he is relying on the shock-value of the drinking incidents that he describes to convince his readers (parents) that this generation of college students really is in danger (which parents already want to believe). He effectively brushes aside counter arguments by claiming that while his generation certainly partied they were nothing like the current college students who, as he describes, are literally drinking themselves to death. This is a great way to support his argument because his readers are probably about the same age as him and are eager to believe that they had fun in college but were certainly not out of control, which asserts their moral superiority over their deviant children.
Is the author’s portrayal of college drinking culture accurate? He’s using extreme examples because wants to generate concern and controversy, he doesn’t seem like he has any interest in accurately describing the culture, so his description is not indicative of student drinking culture.
16.
Alana Reid | February 22, 2010 at 2:14 am
Wow, sorry my response is so late!
Had I read Barret Seaman’s selection, “The College Alcohol Crisis” from his book Binge prior to attending college and being exposed to its drinking culture, I believe that my perceptions of student night life would be highly different from the views that I currently hold. While there is certainly truth in Seaman’s narrative of alcohol’s prevalence in the college social scene, I believe the degree to which it is embellished is an exaggerated version of the reality of college drinking.
In the selection, Seaman narrates the tragic stories of several college students whose lives were taken for alcohol-related reasons. Many of the stories are very grave and truly frightening. As a college student, the stories made me evaluate and question my own experiences and habits while participating in Cornell’s nightlife. It is very clear to me that drinking never can nor will justify a student death and any consumption of alcohol to that extreme should be avoided and condemned. However, I believe that Seaman’s interpretation of how frequently this type of drinking is a concern on college campuses is overestimated. All of the student stories, while they were certainly severe incidents that deserve attention, were exceptions to the typical weekend. Seaman’s piece, however, fails to highlight this reality.
Ironically, the chapter discusses the pluralistic ignorance phenomena, referring to it as “social norming”. Seaman does point out that in most college campuses, students’ perceptions of how much their peers drink is highly overestimated. He goes on to point out that campuses whose preventative measures take social norming into account saw some success. However, by writing a piece that exaggerates and horrifies college drinking, Seaman is doing little to reverse this “trend” of college binge drinking.