Binge Drinking On College Campuses

Drinking on college campuses has become a huge problem. For example, in the 10th century only old people used to drink, but now students drink more than their parents. Students see their parents drinking, so they may think that drinking has no effect on health that anyone can drink so why can’t the students drink? Therefore, college students have been drinking alcohol since the 14th century. Barrett Seaman’s article “How Bingeing Became the New College Sport,” appearing in TIME magazine on August 29, 2005, explains how binge drinking is affecting college students. It also suggests that lowering the drinking age might help solve the problem of binge drinking. This article has much information on how and where students get drunk.

The biggest problem with this alcohol abuse is the way the kids consume it. Binge drinking is the biggest worry with this high alcohol consumption. Binge drinking is consuming high quantities of alcohol in a short period of time. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcohol Consumption 4 out of 5 college students drink alcohol, about half of those who do engage in binge drinking. There are many bad results that happen when students do consume alcohol at such a high rate on their own body and those around them. Not only do these students decrease their inhibitions, but their ability to make smart decisions also decreases quite a bit. Some of the many problems these students face is death, assault, sexual abuse, self-injuries, health problems and academic problems.

Binge drinking is considered to be a health problem because nearly half of all college students have reported to drink more than 5 drinks is a short period of time (Hennessee, 2013). There has been about 1,825 college students who have died from alcohol-related injuries such as motor-vehicle crashes with the students being between 18 - 24 years old (College Drinking Fact Sheet, 2015). An increase of 6% of college deaths has occurred due to binge breaking increasing the total amount from 1,600 to 1,700 (Hingson, Heeren, & Wechsler, n.d.).

“According to the CDC, about 90% of all teen alcohol consumption occurs in the form of Binge Drinking, which experts say peaks at the age of nineteen.” (qtd by Listfield). Binge Drinking is the consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. The author, Emily Listfield, defines that the standard alcohol consumption over a two hour period is considered to be four beers for women and five beers for men. This has become a great distraction for college students nationwide and a major dilemma on college campuses. Nearly two hundred thousand students visit emergency rooms each year due to the abuse of alcohol, and more than one thousand seven hundred students die. In the article “ The Underage Drinking Epidemic”, Listfield identifies the problems that underage drinking can cause, the dangers that could happen, and four solutions on what parents can do to keep their kids from binge drinking.

College drinking is a major problem and it affects the lives of students their families and the community. As the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism website notes: “About four out of five college students drink alcohol. . .” (“College Drinking”). The Affects of alcohol have impacted the lives of many people. I believe drinking is a problem, and believe that it is a problem that it is often overlooked by Parents, colleges, and students. Parents, colleges, and students need to learn about college drinking, the factors that make it a problem, and how to prevent students from drinking while attending college or limit

“Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking,” a text written Henry Wechsler was first introduced to me in my English 102 class. In this Essay Wechsler brought to the reader’s attention that binge drinking was major problem on many college campuses. Wechsler aims to convince readers that binge drinking is a problem that needs to be stopped. Some of Wechsler’s statements made in this text were persuasive while others were opinions.

techprogram/paper_40822.htm)." Some other effects that can happen from drinking is that students get in trouble with police, vandalism, get injured, or even worse, death. Over 1,400 students are killed annually because of their alcohol use, according to researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health. This survey also claims that over 600,000 students a year are assaulted by other students who have been drinking. Additionally, over 70,000 are the victims of sex assaults or date rapes in similar circumstances. These are very disturbing figures. Thirty-one percent of college students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and 6 percent for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the past 12 months, according to questionnaire-based self-reports about their drinking. Drinking heavily seems to bring out more difficulties in a person's life and can only continue the same way as an adult. One starts to rely on alcohol to solve problems and may continue throughout their life because their body becomes dependent on alcohol to make them feel good again.

High school is over and it is your first time away form home, what are you going to do? The typical college student wants to party! Of the people that were surveyed over half believed that the legal drinking age should be lowered. [O’Kane 1] The legal age to drink in the United States is now 21 years old; college freshman, sophomores, and some juniors are not of the legal age to drink. This causes a problem on many campuses; several students are experiencing their first time away from parental care in a setting sinonomus with drinking and clubbing. Some feel pressure from family and friends to receive excellent grades while attending school, sometimes the pressure is too much and going out and

The consumption of alcohol as a habitual behavior has long been associated with the American collegiate experience, despite the many known negative consequences a student who partakes in drinking can encounter. Because of the danger drunken students pose to a college’s reputation and the safety of its surrounding areas, much research has been done concerning the collegiate party and drinking scenes. This research mostly studied the demographics of the student body, so strategies developed to curtail the illegal or overconsumption of alcohol could be targeted towards the specific groups that demonstrated the highest likelihood of participating in these acts. When the strategies were implemented, however, there was little decline in the number of college students who chose to party and drink (Vander Ven 2011). This failure did not point toward a flaw in the research data, but instead a lack of research into the benefits a collegiate drinker receives that are rewarding to the point he or she cannot resist. This is the topic of Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard by Thomas Vander Ven.

For countless young adults after high school the next stepping stone is college, however, students are not only learning from the classes they attend, but also from the parties. Consequently, they are being introduced to alcohol and plenty of it; learning how to shotgun a beer or attempt a keg stand is all the rage. Suddenly, people are viewing college binge drinking as a right of passage for even their youngest students. Thus, demands the questioning of lowering the drinking age to counteract college binge drinking. “The reality is that at age 18 in this country, one is a legal adult. Young people view 21 as utterly arbitrary—which it is. And because the explanation given them is so condescending—that they lack maturity and judgment,

A recent event that showcases that binge drinking is still a problem for many college students at the University of Iowa is the story of one Iowa student during the 2013 football season. Samantha Goudie, who is a twenty-two year old University of Iowa student, was once known as ‘Vodka Samm’ not only around the Iowa City area but nationally. One day in a highly intoxicated state, she tried to jump onto the field during a regular home football game and after quickly being arrested was known around the nation as “The World’s Drunkest College Student.” She was cited for having a blood-alcohol level of .341 percent, which is more than four times the legal driving limit. This event just continued to help solidify the University of Iowa’s out of control party school reputation. However, it did bring light to the serious problem of the students binge drinking and its effects especially during home football games.

Due to the accepting collegiate culture of drinking college students will often overindulge or binge drink. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as, “four drinks for women and five drinks for men in about two hours.” What many college students do not realize while they are out at a party drinking is that this type of behavior is extremely dangerous and can cause alcohol poisoning which if untreated can potentially lead to death. The United States Government’s College Drinking Prevention website stated that, “a recent study estimates more than 1,400 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year form alcohol-related injuries, and 500,000 students sustain alcohol-related injuries each

Research has supported the observation that young people in America consume alcohol regularly; this prevalence of use increases rapidly during adolescence, as well as a few years afterward (Wagenaar and Wolfson 37). This has come to be a problem among college students. It has been shown through extensive quantitative and qualitative research that those under twenty-one years of age are able to obtain alcohol, which allows them to binge drink. Binge drinking holds many problems for college students: alcohol poisoning, DUIs, traffic accidents, and even fatalities.

Alcohol use among college students has always been a popular subject among teachers, parents, researchers, and even students. The actual act of drinking alcohol is not necessarily the problem, whether legal or not. The main problem is the act of binge drinking of college students, of age or not. Drinking modest amounts of alcohol may have some consequences, but binge drinking has more negative consequences than normal modest drinking. There are many examples as to the consequences that binge drinking can cause to college student’s lives, but one of the main consequences that students face as a result of frequent drinking is poor academic final grades.

In the U.S. the legal drinking age is twenty one but that does not stop students on college campuses from participating in binge drinking. For over a decade, binge drinking among students on college campuses is being recognized as one of the most serious public health concerns. In that it often has severe health and behavioral consequences for drinkers themselves, as well as others in the campus community (Chen, Feeley, 2016). College students that binge drink do not limit their consumption of alcohol to only a few drinks during an occasion. That is what distinguishes social drinking from binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as five consecutive drinks in two hours for males and four consecutive drinks in two hours for females (Marczinski, C. A., Grant, E. C., & Grant, V. J. 2009 p.9). College students binge drink for a lot of reasons like freedom, more time on their hands, social factors and coping, but this needs to stop because the majority of college students do not know the short term, or long term health effects it has on themselves and other students and people around them that do not participate in binge drinking.