“Let Me think about this” department

Sorry…I DID think about it. The idea below seems well-intentioned, but is absolutely foolish in my

opinion, Ms Stamato. Students are there in college to learn. NOT to be treated as lab rats.

As for the humor the columnist sees in the situation–pardon me for not laughing. Not when this article is connected to the alcohol-related hazing death of a Rider student and the subsequent arrest of two lower-level people in the Rider community. Hank Nuwer
Excerpt:

Hazing, drinking and life on campus

Posted by Linda Stamato August 04, 2007 9:42PM

College communities have been placed on notice, as the Star Ledger observed today, with the indictments of two Rider University administrators along with three students–for what amounts to culpability in the alcohol poisoning death of a student early this year in a fraternity house hazing activity, “big/little night,” on the Rider campus.

Criminal proscecution is rare in student drinking cases, but may become increasingly likely unless the problem is dealt with in the serious way it requires. Binge drinking on campus, in some quarters known as “the rum curriculum,” cannot be tolerated, treated as a fringe problem, or excused as a rite of passage for undergraduates on college campuses across the nation.

Before too long, we’ll be hearing about existing and new initiatives to deal with drinking on campus. A unique one surfaced recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 3, 2007).
Two authors, Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George, report that they have uncovered an initiative at Lucifer College in Minnesota, that falls into the category, they say, of “thinking outside of the box.”

Lucifer is involving the faculty in what the college dean says is the institution’s effort to make binge drinking unfashionable. Faculty members bartend beer bashes in dorms, and students are invited to faculty cocktail parties, where they are encouraged to drink in the company of their professors. Preliminary studies–direct observation–suggest that in the presence of faculty, student consumption of alcohol is reduced dramatically.

The college has also inserted the subject of alcohol into the curriculum in a wide range of courses: There is Biology 18, “The Biochemistry of Booze”; English 24, “Drinking and the Poetic Muse”; History 38, “Repealing the 18th Amendment”; History 44, “The Inebriated Irish: Myth or Reality?”; Philosophy 4, “I Think, Therefore I Drink”; French 35, “Le Rouse et le Blanc” the Aesthetics of Wine”; and Russian 23, “The White Russian.” There is a drinking requirement with each of these courses and students are required by their honor code to keep a log of drinking assignments and vouch that all their drinking is on their own initiative.

There are companion all-college lecture series featuring various debates on alcohol-related subjects; among the students required to attend, consumption of alcohol, the authors report, has dropped considerably. A Ph.D. program in distillation science is under serious review and other activities, curricular and co-curricular, as well.

The point? By extending credibility to alcohol, its consumption will be suppressed.

With a firm tongue in cheek, the authors of “A Rum Curriculum” are attempting to focus serious attention on as far from funny a subject as one can get and in this they may well have the impact they seek. There is nothing quite as effective as well-developed humor to make a serious point. Indeed, I’m waiting to see Drew Sheneman’s contribution to the editorial page of the Ledger on this compelling, urgent problem.