ATTACK OF THE PURITANS
I hate puritanical thinking in regards to alcohol. Allow me to explain why.
This week, a kid I know went a little overboard with the hallucinogenics (funny how that happens!) and ended up leaving the school. I can't say I'm all that sad - I was not exactly a fan of this person, who I had affectionally nicknamed "Sir Skeevemonster" in the past, and for good reason. But something else occurred that did irritate the holy hell out of me.
See, the first I learned of this kid's downfall happened when my RD knocked on my door, asking to speak to me. I said yes, assuming that she was coming in to tell me they'd found fifty pounds of crack cocaine in my mailbox and were thus expelling me, paranoia being the best option around here. No, not at all. She wanted to talk to me about a student she could not name who had done something she couldn't specify with drugs and did I know anything. I asked why, exactly, she'd come to me and she said "my name was mentioned." I said, entirely truthfully, that I had barely partied or been involved in any semblance of the scene lately, due to focusing primarily on my work. She smiled beatifically. "I'm so happy for you!"
How irritating. My life wasn't better for that. It was more boring. I was just holding my nose to the grindstone because I wanted to get into the UC's and get the hell out of the Freezing Wasteland that is Massachusetts. It was not because I'd seen some sort of sugary light of Puritanical Thought.
I did not say this to her.
Well, I didn't know anything at all, considering this was the first I'd heard of it. She was legally bound not to tell me the name of the person, so I had to talk to quite a few people to figure out the name of the person who had succumbed to The Fear. Once I found out, I became actively Pissed Off, because I'd had words with the kid before, and I would be mad as hell if aforementioned kid had mentioned my name in some perverse attempt to get my ass in the broiler along with his/her own.
I went back to my RD and told her the truth: I had no idea how the kid had got the drugs, I did not engage in the use of such drugs myself (vivid night terrors + acid = bad juju), and furthermore, I wanted to know why such kid had mentioned me, since we weren't exactly friends, if you catch my drift.
"Oh," she said. "You were just on our radar last semester, and your name was brought up as someone who might know."
Fabulous. So I am apparently a card-carrying member of the Simon's Rock Dangerous Debauchery club, at least as defined by the R.D's. Despite the fact I have barely partied in three months and have generally been a model student. No, one infraction near the beginning of the year and the occasional tendency to come home rather late on the weekends, and apparantly you are FOREVER HEADED DOWN THE PATH OF DISSOLUTION. Remember, kids: the Ninja Turtles are here to inform you that alcohol LEADS TO DEATH.
I'm growing increasingly irritated by this school's (and the R.D's) attitude that any form of college partying, even at it's most innocuous manifestations, is some sort of horrible sign of a downward spiral into DEATH. Somehow, most "normal" colleges manage to have a strong party culture and still turn out healthy and happy graduates who go on to successful careers. But Simon's Rock, due to it's younger students and an apparantly increasing no-tolerance attitude towards all forms of sketchy behavior, isn't like that at all. Even the occasional drink is obviously a Problem. This also creates a massive distrust of the R.D's. I had an intense headache a few weeks back, one that caused interesting visual fracturing. I had been to a party the night before but had had only one drink - I was by no means hungover. However, as soon as I asked the R.D to let me talk to a nurse on the phone, I was given the "Oh no, YOU ARE SPIRALING INTO DEATH with an ALCOHOL HEADACHE" look.
How utterly ridiculous. All that cultivated was my personal resolution to never come to a R.D with a health problem ever again, since apparantly everything is a manifestation of sin. God forbid a young healthy 18 year old occasionally go to parties. I should stay home every night playing checkers and doing my homework.
Somehow, almost every other country in the world has a lower drinking age then we do and still have lower rates of alcoholism and alcohol poisoning then we do. In fact, in most European countries (unlike here) being drunk in public isn't just a criminal offense, it's a social one - it is considered profoundly embarrassing and uncouth to be stumbling around with the barfs in a public location. And thus fewer people get utterly and completely messed up. Kids there are introduced to alcohol at a fairly young age - a glass of wine with dinner, the occasional aperitif. Alcohol stops becoming a forbidden fruit and becomes a known element of one's life: you drink a little, you get loosened up, you stop before you coat your surroundings with vomit.
These are, unfortunately, not skills most American kids are allowed to learn. In one of my classes, we took an informal hand-raising poll of whose families drank every night. To our mutual surprise, only my hand and the hand of the Hungarian kid went up. I find this very interesting - do "normal" Americans really have alcohol so rarely? Or is this "saving the booze for occasions when we LOSE CONTROL" explain why Americans seem to be so ridiculously bad at handling their liquor? Are the Puritans still messing with our poor beleaguered heads?
I was lucky: my parents are both Southern and yuppies, which means I was allowed wine from a pretty early age. They always have a drink and a glass of wine, every night. If they drink any more at someone's house or at a restaurant, it's only when I'm along to be the designated driver. Another factoid: I have never seen my parents drunk. Ever. I think there may be a connection between the two. Furthermore, my parents are realists, and have no issue with my occasionally drinking in moderation at parties. This understanding works well for both of us, because I feel no danger in telling them just about everything I do without fear of reprisal, mainly because I don't do anything completely ridiculous.
I also note that the kids whose parents impose strict rules, morals, and even religions upon them are much more likely to go over the line and get themselves into trouble at parties. I really have nothing to rebel against; thus I set my own lines and make my own (pretty much safe) rules. But if a kid who has something to prove against puritan parents finds themselves in a free environment, they're going to follow their instincts: they're going to give their parental authorities the finger in every way possible. Someone's gotta stop this cycle.
I wish that Simon's Rock and the United States at large would abandon this ridiculous and actively dangerous policy and enter the 21st century, but I know it's not likely to happen. Apparantly proving some sort of incredibly retrograde point about the many dangers of drinking alcohol comes before educating people about how to use what can be a very fun substance properly.
Well, our loss.
This week, a kid I know went a little overboard with the hallucinogenics (funny how that happens!) and ended up leaving the school. I can't say I'm all that sad - I was not exactly a fan of this person, who I had affectionally nicknamed "Sir Skeevemonster" in the past, and for good reason. But something else occurred that did irritate the holy hell out of me.
See, the first I learned of this kid's downfall happened when my RD knocked on my door, asking to speak to me. I said yes, assuming that she was coming in to tell me they'd found fifty pounds of crack cocaine in my mailbox and were thus expelling me, paranoia being the best option around here. No, not at all. She wanted to talk to me about a student she could not name who had done something she couldn't specify with drugs and did I know anything. I asked why, exactly, she'd come to me and she said "my name was mentioned." I said, entirely truthfully, that I had barely partied or been involved in any semblance of the scene lately, due to focusing primarily on my work. She smiled beatifically. "I'm so happy for you!"
How irritating. My life wasn't better for that. It was more boring. I was just holding my nose to the grindstone because I wanted to get into the UC's and get the hell out of the Freezing Wasteland that is Massachusetts. It was not because I'd seen some sort of sugary light of Puritanical Thought.
I did not say this to her.
Well, I didn't know anything at all, considering this was the first I'd heard of it. She was legally bound not to tell me the name of the person, so I had to talk to quite a few people to figure out the name of the person who had succumbed to The Fear. Once I found out, I became actively Pissed Off, because I'd had words with the kid before, and I would be mad as hell if aforementioned kid had mentioned my name in some perverse attempt to get my ass in the broiler along with his/her own.
I went back to my RD and told her the truth: I had no idea how the kid had got the drugs, I did not engage in the use of such drugs myself (vivid night terrors + acid = bad juju), and furthermore, I wanted to know why such kid had mentioned me, since we weren't exactly friends, if you catch my drift.
"Oh," she said. "You were just on our radar last semester, and your name was brought up as someone who might know."
Fabulous. So I am apparently a card-carrying member of the Simon's Rock Dangerous Debauchery club, at least as defined by the R.D's. Despite the fact I have barely partied in three months and have generally been a model student. No, one infraction near the beginning of the year and the occasional tendency to come home rather late on the weekends, and apparantly you are FOREVER HEADED DOWN THE PATH OF DISSOLUTION. Remember, kids: the Ninja Turtles are here to inform you that alcohol LEADS TO DEATH.
I'm growing increasingly irritated by this school's (and the R.D's) attitude that any form of college partying, even at it's most innocuous manifestations, is some sort of horrible sign of a downward spiral into DEATH. Somehow, most "normal" colleges manage to have a strong party culture and still turn out healthy and happy graduates who go on to successful careers. But Simon's Rock, due to it's younger students and an apparantly increasing no-tolerance attitude towards all forms of sketchy behavior, isn't like that at all. Even the occasional drink is obviously a Problem. This also creates a massive distrust of the R.D's. I had an intense headache a few weeks back, one that caused interesting visual fracturing. I had been to a party the night before but had had only one drink - I was by no means hungover. However, as soon as I asked the R.D to let me talk to a nurse on the phone, I was given the "Oh no, YOU ARE SPIRALING INTO DEATH with an ALCOHOL HEADACHE" look.
How utterly ridiculous. All that cultivated was my personal resolution to never come to a R.D with a health problem ever again, since apparantly everything is a manifestation of sin. God forbid a young healthy 18 year old occasionally go to parties. I should stay home every night playing checkers and doing my homework.
Somehow, almost every other country in the world has a lower drinking age then we do and still have lower rates of alcoholism and alcohol poisoning then we do. In fact, in most European countries (unlike here) being drunk in public isn't just a criminal offense, it's a social one - it is considered profoundly embarrassing and uncouth to be stumbling around with the barfs in a public location. And thus fewer people get utterly and completely messed up. Kids there are introduced to alcohol at a fairly young age - a glass of wine with dinner, the occasional aperitif. Alcohol stops becoming a forbidden fruit and becomes a known element of one's life: you drink a little, you get loosened up, you stop before you coat your surroundings with vomit.
These are, unfortunately, not skills most American kids are allowed to learn. In one of my classes, we took an informal hand-raising poll of whose families drank every night. To our mutual surprise, only my hand and the hand of the Hungarian kid went up. I find this very interesting - do "normal" Americans really have alcohol so rarely? Or is this "saving the booze for occasions when we LOSE CONTROL" explain why Americans seem to be so ridiculously bad at handling their liquor? Are the Puritans still messing with our poor beleaguered heads?
I was lucky: my parents are both Southern and yuppies, which means I was allowed wine from a pretty early age. They always have a drink and a glass of wine, every night. If they drink any more at someone's house or at a restaurant, it's only when I'm along to be the designated driver. Another factoid: I have never seen my parents drunk. Ever. I think there may be a connection between the two. Furthermore, my parents are realists, and have no issue with my occasionally drinking in moderation at parties. This understanding works well for both of us, because I feel no danger in telling them just about everything I do without fear of reprisal, mainly because I don't do anything completely ridiculous.
I also note that the kids whose parents impose strict rules, morals, and even religions upon them are much more likely to go over the line and get themselves into trouble at parties. I really have nothing to rebel against; thus I set my own lines and make my own (pretty much safe) rules. But if a kid who has something to prove against puritan parents finds themselves in a free environment, they're going to follow their instincts: they're going to give their parental authorities the finger in every way possible. Someone's gotta stop this cycle.
I wish that Simon's Rock and the United States at large would abandon this ridiculous and actively dangerous policy and enter the 21st century, but I know it's not likely to happen. Apparantly proving some sort of incredibly retrograde point about the many dangers of drinking alcohol comes before educating people about how to use what can be a very fun substance properly.
Well, our loss.