7 ms·

One college town's uneasy embrace of drinking

60 points by Thevet 12y ago

mlrtime 12y ago
"Even going to the tape, though, is not always enough. The mother of the guy in the Santa suit maintained that the police should’ve taken her son, who eventually passed out, back to his room, not to jail. Recounting the story, Mr. Williamson looks momentarily exasperated. He tried to explain, he says, that her son was safer sleeping off his drunkenness under supervision." It seems the LEOs cannot win when dealing with a mother who 'knows best'
- cowardlydragon 12y ago
  Well, considering he's one of the three people arrested per weekend out of "thousands"... it's arbitrary and ineffective.
  - mmanfrin 12y ago
    Three people arrested for doing things considered over the top (e.g. passed out on a park bench, breaking in to a dorm of the opposite sex) out of thousands of drinkers -- who they do not enforce drinking laws on.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  I'd chalk it up to the squeaky wheel problem. There are a huge number of situations where there are two sets of rules or prices or options, one for most people and one for people who complain once. If you're a sucker, you pay retail. If you make the slightest effort to haggle, you can save money. You can bargain your traffic tickets down to non-moving violations for fewer points off your license and a smaller fine. If you complain at a hotel you might get a free spa pass. If you have overdue library books, you can sometimes sweet talk the librarian into waiving your fine. If you ask for a raise, you might get it. There are a huge number of situations where -- by making the slightest protest -- you can sometimes save a bit of time or money or get something for nothing, and moreover there is usually no penalty for trying. I don't think this mother was doing anything different: she may not think her child is a special flower, but she has learned through much experience in life that it never hurts to ask for special treatment, because you sometimes get it.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start drinking in a supervised environment (read: Mom and Dad, who won't appreciate that Sonny threw up in his shoe again because he came home way too sozzled to find the toilet bowl), and they start on beer and wine, which makes it much more difficult to overdose. In America the infantilized teenagers go off to college and then proceed to black out on spirits, because spirits are easier to smuggle into the dorm. What could possibly go wrong there? Also: the American problem of trying to get on top of alcohol abuse by limiting availability, when you would rather limit damage and trust peoples' responsibility. Why not hand out serious prison time for first-time drunk drivers? It would increase road safety so much.
- revelation 12y ago
  In normal countries, the underage drinking also isn't criminalized. It is illegal to sell alcohol to underage persons, but it's not illegal for said underage person to drink it. That said, I'd love for drunk driving to have harsher penalties. Not jail, but simply driving ban for at least a year with an extended retest (psych eval, as they do in other countries if you lose your license to drunk driving).
  - ams6110 12y ago
    DUI is already at least probation + a significant suspension in most states, at least that's my perception. At best, if there was no accident/injury, you get a provisional driving license that will let you go to/from work, and you'll lose that on a 2nd offense. Plus your insurance will go sky-high. It's really not the slap on the wrist it used to be. Simple public intoxication or illegal consumption is, in most cases, something you can have expunged if it's a first offense and you pay the bribe^H^H^H^H^H pre-trial diversion fee.
- nemothekid 12y ago
basseq 12y ago
I went to UGA my freshman year. Compared to other campuses where the parties are at fraternities or private residences, Athens is a bar (and, as the article points out, a fake ID) town. It was very much a wink-and-grin environment: the "bad photocopy job pasted onto a McDonald's gift card" description is very apt. Some bars were tougher than others, but for a guy, showing up with a favorable distribution of girls would cause the bouncer to look the other way. It's obvious and egregious (UGA suspends open container laws on gamedays), but as the article's subjects and other HN posters point out, the problem is not bars and fake IDs, and more college students' drinking problems. (Which exist at fraternities, house parties, and other venues as well.) To that end, I laud the focus on safety, education, and one-strikes over just pushing the "scene" underground.
- cyanbane 12y ago
  (Re open container suspension) A few years ago I paid a $280 fine for walking an open beer across the street in Athens. To this article's point I think the cops pick and choose as to where they may be most effective at a given point in the day, the beer didn't have a label on it (I brewed it) and the cop may have thought it looked odd. Although the town has stayed the same since my years in Athens, I do think there is an uptick in underage drinking in general, or at the least a larger movement to drinking harder spirits. Personally, I think there is a larger mention of liquor by name in today's music than there has been in the past and that plays a part.
wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
Overdrinking is a problem that I only think is going to get worse until there's some serious changes made to how drinking is treated legally. When I was in college, I was a part of my fraternity's "risk management" team, a group of brothers whose only job is to stay sober during parties, find people who had drunk too much or more commonly people who had completely blacked out and hush them off away from the alcohol or to a safe part of the house where they could be watched for signs of alcohol poisoning and kept safe from being taken advantage of. If there's any one trend I've noticed while I worked risk management at those parties, it was that the more taboo it is to drink alcohol, the more that people binge drink it. It's always the students whose parents were the most uptight about drinking or those who couldn't purchase alcohol yet who were the biggest binge drinkers and most common to pass out. There was one period during which there was a university crackdown on drinking at fraternity parties, and the most noticeable thing during the crackdown was that people would drink a -lot- more. The amazing part about it was when people turned 21, it was like they became seasoned drinkers over night. People who had problems pacing themselves during every party would instantly turn into a moderate drinker once their 21st had passed. I think it would be very interesting to see some studies done on the taboo of drinking and whether it changes people's likelihood to overdrink, because it seemed with every crackdown measure the local police force took against drinking at parties, the problem only got worse.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
The solution to this is to start drinking beers with your kids at age 10. This way drinking will be the most uncool thing ever, and they'll grow up to be teetotalers. Seriously though, we need a culture change. You can't tell them they can never drink, then turn them loose in another city by themselves and expect it to not be taken to extremes. That's pretty dumb.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  This is actually allowed in some states. There's doesn't seem to be any particular pattern to which states allow it and which don't, eg stereotypically liberal California has the same ultra-strict requirements as stereotypically conservative Kentucky. Here's a neat summary of the different exceptions to the 21-year minimum age rule, broken out by state. http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591 http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    3. for religious purposes in 26 states Haha, I guess all the Catholic churches in the other 24 states will get raided next time they have a First Communion. This is just one example of how unreliable these sorts of comparisons are.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Not necessarily. When I was growing up in Catholic Ireland we used to eat the communion wafer but only the priest drank the wine - more because it would have been impractical to serve to hundreds of people than any other reason, but also partly from hygiene considerations. I asked our priest about it once (I was an alter boy) and his response was that it was just too much hassle and they were glad to abandon the practice. Back then churches used to be packed 4 times a day on Sundays so I can see how it would be a headache. I used to get hand cramps from holding the little metal plate under people's chins to prevent the communion wafer falling on the floor.
      - 12y ago
cafard 12y ago
Until the beginning of the 1980s, 18-year-olds could drink at least beer in most states. In New York they could drink hard liquor, in Colorado 3.2 beer, for example. Then the Reagan Administration decided that stopping under-21 drinking would reduce traffic deaths as much as mandatory airbags. States that did not raise the drinking age would lose highway funds. By the mid-1980s, the drinking age was 21 pretty much everywhere.

60 points by Thevet 12y ago

"Even going to the tape, though, is not always enough. The mother of the guy in the Santa suit maintained that the police should’ve taken her son, who eventually passed out, back to his room, not to jail. Recounting the story, Mr. Williamson looks momentarily exasperated. He tried to explain, he says, that her son was safer sleeping off his drunkenness under supervision." It seems the LEOs cannot win when dealing with a mother who 'knows best'

cowardlydragon 12y ago
Well, considering he's one of the three people arrested per weekend out of "thousands"... it's arbitrary and ineffective.
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  Three people arrested for doing things considered over the top (e.g. passed out on a park bench, breaking in to a dorm of the opposite sex) out of thousands of drinkers -- who they do not enforce drinking laws on.
saalweachter 12y ago
I'd chalk it up to the squeaky wheel problem. There are a huge number of situations where there are two sets of rules or prices or options, one for most people and one for people who complain once. If you're a sucker, you pay retail. If you make the slightest effort to haggle, you can save money. You can bargain your traffic tickets down to non-moving violations for fewer points off your license and a smaller fine. If you complain at a hotel you might get a free spa pass. If you have overdue library books, you can sometimes sweet talk the librarian into waiving your fine. If you ask for a raise, you might get it. There are a huge number of situations where -- by making the slightest protest -- you can sometimes save a bit of time or money or get something for nothing, and moreover there is usually no penalty for trying. I don't think this mother was doing anything different: she may not think her child is a special flower, but she has learned through much experience in life that it never hurts to ask for special treatment, because you sometimes get it.

HarryHirsch 12y ago

She runs “bartending school” for incoming students during mandatory orientation sessions at Georgia. Handing over a vodka bottle full of water, she asks them to pour what they think is one drink into a 16-ounce cup. After a discussion of alcohol’s physical effects and consequences, she empties the cups into two-ounce shot glasses. What seemed like one drink is often two or three. In normal countries, teenagers start drinking in a supervised environment (read: Mom and Dad, who won't appreciate that Sonny threw up in his shoe again because he came home way too sozzled to find the toilet bowl), and they start on beer and wine, which makes it much more difficult to overdose. In America the infantilized teenagers go off to college and then proceed to black out on spirits, because spirits are easier to smuggle into the dorm. What could possibly go wrong there? Also: the American problem of trying to get on top of alcohol abuse by limiting availability, when you would rather limit damage and trust peoples' responsibility. Why not hand out serious prison time for first-time drunk drivers? It would increase road safety so much.

revelation 12y ago
In normal countries, the underage drinking also isn't criminalized. It is illegal to sell alcohol to underage persons, but it's not illegal for said underage person to drink it. That said, I'd love for drunk driving to have harsher penalties. Not jail, but simply driving ban for at least a year with an extended retest (psych eval, as they do in other countries if you lose your license to drunk driving).
- ams6110 12y ago
  DUI is already at least probation + a significant suspension in most states, at least that's my perception. At best, if there was no accident/injury, you get a provisional driving license that will let you go to/from work, and you'll lose that on a 2nd offense. Plus your insurance will go sky-high. It's really not the slap on the wrist it used to be. Simple public intoxication or illegal consumption is, in most cases, something you can have expunged if it's a first offense and you pay the bribe^H^H^H^H^H pre-trial diversion fee.
nemothekid 12y ago

basseq 12y ago

I went to UGA my freshman year. Compared to other campuses where the parties are at fraternities or private residences, Athens is a bar (and, as the article points out, a fake ID) town. It was very much a wink-and-grin environment: the "bad photocopy job pasted onto a McDonald's gift card" description is very apt. Some bars were tougher than others, but for a guy, showing up with a favorable distribution of girls would cause the bouncer to look the other way. It's obvious and egregious (UGA suspends open container laws on gamedays), but as the article's subjects and other HN posters point out, the problem is not bars and fake IDs, and more college students' drinking problems. (Which exist at fraternities, house parties, and other venues as well.) To that end, I laud the focus on safety, education, and one-strikes over just pushing the "scene" underground.

cyanbane 12y ago
(Re open container suspension) A few years ago I paid a $280 fine for walking an open beer across the street in Athens. To this article's point I think the cops pick and choose as to where they may be most effective at a given point in the day, the beer didn't have a label on it (I brewed it) and the cop may have thought it looked odd. Although the town has stayed the same since my years in Athens, I do think there is an uptick in underage drinking in general, or at the least a larger movement to drinking harder spirits. Personally, I think there is a larger mention of liquor by name in today's music than there has been in the past and that plays a part.

wwwwwwwwww 12y ago

Overdrinking is a problem that I only think is going to get worse until there's some serious changes made to how drinking is treated legally. When I was in college, I was a part of my fraternity's "risk management" team, a group of brothers whose only job is to stay sober during parties, find people who had drunk too much or more commonly people who had completely blacked out and hush them off away from the alcohol or to a safe part of the house where they could be watched for signs of alcohol poisoning and kept safe from being taken advantage of. If there's any one trend I've noticed while I worked risk management at those parties, it was that the more taboo it is to drink alcohol, the more that people binge drink it. It's always the students whose parents were the most uptight about drinking or those who couldn't purchase alcohol yet who were the biggest binge drinkers and most common to pass out. There was one period during which there was a university crackdown on drinking at fraternity parties, and the most noticeable thing during the crackdown was that people would drink a -lot- more. The amazing part about it was when people turned 21, it was like they became seasoned drinkers over night. People who had problems pacing themselves during every party would instantly turn into a moderate drinker once their 21st had passed. I think it would be very interesting to see some studies done on the taboo of drinking and whether it changes people's likelihood to overdrink, because it seemed with every crackdown measure the local police force took against drinking at parties, the problem only got worse.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

The solution to this is to start drinking beers with your kids at age 10. This way drinking will be the most uncool thing ever, and they'll grow up to be teetotalers. Seriously though, we need a culture change. You can't tell them they can never drink, then turn them loose in another city by themselves and expect it to not be taken to extremes. That's pretty dumb.

anigbrowl 12y ago
This is actually allowed in some states. There's doesn't seem to be any particular pattern to which states allow it and which don't, eg stereotypically liberal California has the same ultra-strict requirements as stereotypically conservative Kentucky. Here's a neat summary of the different exceptions to the 21-year minimum age rule, broken out by state. http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591 http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
- jessaustin 12y ago
  3. for religious purposes in 26 states Haha, I guess all the Catholic churches in the other 24 states will get raided next time they have a First Communion. This is just one example of how unreliable these sorts of comparisons are.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Not necessarily. When I was growing up in Catholic Ireland we used to eat the communion wafer but only the priest drank the wine - more because it would have been impractical to serve to hundreds of people than any other reason, but also partly from hygiene considerations. I asked our priest about it once (I was an alter boy) and his response was that it was just too much hassle and they were glad to abandon the practice. Back then churches used to be packed 4 times a day on Sundays so I can see how it would be a headache. I used to get hand cramps from holding the little metal plate under people's chins to prevent the communion wafer falling on the floor.
    - 12y ago

cafard 12y ago

Until the beginning of the 1980s, 18-year-olds could drink at least beer in most states. In New York they could drink hard liquor, in Colorado 3.2 beer, for example. Then the Reagan Administration decided that stopping under-21 drinking would reduce traffic deaths as much as mandatory airbags. States that did not raise the drinking age would lose highway funds. By the mid-1980s, the drinking age was 21 pretty much everywhere.