4 ms·

My alma matter (which is directly on a lake) has been gradually banning all unsupervised swimming for students because someone gets blackout drunk and drowns th

by quasse 2y ago

My alma matter (which is directly on a lake) has been gradually banning all unsupervised swimming for students because someone gets blackout drunk and drowns themself in the lake every year. I think it's a tragedy; I spent a lot of my formative time enjoying the lake and the outdoors (not to mention it being one of the few healthy ways to escape the stress of engineering school). The school is also gradually eroding all of the student run outdoor clubs (sailing, mountaineering) because they aren't directly controlled by the university bureaucratic system. Young adults today are having that taken away from them and replaced with nothing.

Apocryphon 2y ago
There's a highly dubious serial killer theory that exists simply because so many young college men drown while drunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory
- Projectiboga 2y ago
  I heard a stat once that most adult male drowning victims had their fly down. This points to someone very drunk trying to pee into a body of water at night. One should always pee away from open water. I recall the suggested distance 100 feet for pee and more for number two.
aeternum 2y ago
What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving. We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues. Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.
  - aeternum 2y ago
    Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury. It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are not actually motivated by saving lives. I get that while modern society is often overprotective, but this sort of hysteria about hysteria seems to be un-nuanced and one-sided. I mean, you want to talk skateboarding, apparently they're letting kids compete these days and 9-year old Ema Kawakami became the very first person to land three 900s in a row, something that Tony Hawk spent years trying to accomplish. https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425 https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425?
      - aeternum 2y ago
        The problem is the university never considers the other side. What is the cost of banning unsupervised swimming? Has Phelps really never swam/trained unsupervised? The issue is the visibility is very one-sided. Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming. No one reads about the hundreds of thousands of kids that do it with no issues. Let people take risk if they understand it and accept the risk. The university should not be held liable but the kid should not be prevented. Risk is often the price of freedom.
        2y ago
- userbinator 2y ago
  Short term vs. long term effects.

by quasse 2y ago

Apocryphon 2y ago

There's a highly dubious serial killer theory that exists simply because so many young college men drown while drunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory

Projectiboga 2y ago
I heard a stat once that most adult male drowning victims had their fly down. This points to someone very drunk trying to pee into a body of water at night. One should always pee away from open water. I recall the suggested distance 100 feet for pee and more for number two.

aeternum 2y ago

What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving. We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues. Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.

Apocryphon 2y ago
Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.
- aeternum 2y ago
  Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury. It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool. Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are not actually motivated by saving lives. I get that while modern society is often overprotective, but this sort of hysteria about hysteria seems to be un-nuanced and one-sided. I mean, you want to talk skateboarding, apparently they're letting kids compete these days and 9-year old Ema Kawakami became the very first person to land three 900s in a row, something that Tony Hawk spent years trying to accomplish. https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425 https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425?
    - aeternum 2y ago
      The problem is the university never considers the other side. What is the cost of banning unsupervised swimming? Has Phelps really never swam/trained unsupervised? The issue is the visibility is very one-sided. Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming. No one reads about the hundreds of thousands of kids that do it with no issues. Let people take risk if they understand it and accept the risk. The university should not be held liable but the kid should not be prevented. Risk is often the price of freedom.
      - 2y ago
userbinator 2y ago
Short term vs. long term effects.