NYT: Shortly before the kickoff of the Minnesota-Illinois college football game at the new TCF Bank Stadium this month, two Minnesota students - one male, one female - slipped into an unmarked entrance about five minutes apart. They dressed appropriately for the unseasonably warm and sunny day, in short-sleeve maroon-and-gold Gophers attire. And they greeted Amy Barsness, a university official, like an old friend.
Article Source: NBC Sports
from:NBC SportsBattling binge drinking on college game days
Seeded on Fri Nov 20, 2009 7:50 PM EST (NBC Sports)
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The truth is that most college presidents these days are selected at least as much for their fund raising abilities as for academic leadership; for many institutions, this involves wining and dining potential contributors. In addition, many of these potential donors are alumni who themselves participated in drinking parties in their college days.
I will believe that the colleges are really serious when they put the fraternity leaders on notice that they are criminally responsible for providing alcohol to minors if their underage members get drunk at the faternity's parties. Right now, I believe the instinctive reaction is to protect the student leaders from outside enforcement.
Problem is that football games are basically pretty boring. Like with fishing, drinking heavily helps get you through them.
Look in the stands after a game, there are thousands of mini-bottles brought in illegally. And guess where the bigger piles lay? In the ALUMNI section!!!. Learned binge drinking in college often leads to continued alcohol abuse later in life.
The BAC checks will not solve anything from what I have seen........
It is not necessarily binge drinking. It is just fun to drink while watching a game. Period. If they won't sell it in the stadium, you have to improvise.
This is simple supply and demand economics. Students (or young people in general) "binge" drink because they feel the need to drink what they have when they have it, because they can't have it whenever they want! In all settings! Pure and simple!
It has always been so stupid to me that the "powers that be" often do not sell alcohol in college stadiums, because (a) most of the attendees are over 21 and are able to handle their alcohol intake, and (b) the policy only compels people, over 21 and below, to drink excessively while tailgating, because they know that once they get in there, they cannot drink for 3-4 hours. Is this healthy? No! Is it true? Yes!
I have no problem with people having to deal with the extra rules if they have been cited for excessive drinking, but, before that, let's not punish the majority for the sins of the few.
You must be 90 years old or a middle age shut in, go to a college game and you will see what is all about. Simply put, many college students who are bright blow their future getting caught up in binge drinking....very sad.
Solve this? Put an end to college athletics and start concentrating on what matters.
When you've seen one football game, you've seen them all. A bunch of basket weaving majors who are allowed to run wild on campus, and then become thugs in their "professional" lives.
And we, as the well educated Americans we are, celebrate their exploits by drinking ourselves into vomit stage and then say we had fun. DUMB!