I get that a student dying is terrible. And I understand the desire at WSU to keep underage kids from drinking, especially from binge drinking. But I’m not sure telling their parents is necessarily helpful.
With the first day of classes less than a week away, Washington State University has a new plan to reduce binge drinking that includes scheduling more Friday morning classes and calling the parents of drunk students.
WSU has been looking for ways to curb underage drinking since last October when a student died of alcohol poisoning.
Freshman Kenneth Hummel, 18, had a blood alcohol level that was five times the legal limit. His death last fall came after three students were injured in alcohol-related falls from buildings in recent months, two at WSU and one at the University of Idaho.
Among the changes, WSU will call parents the first time an underage student violates alcohol and drug policies.
I didn’t have a drop of alcohol my entire 4 years of college,* but for a lot of people, college is a chance to get away from their parents. I think you can have consequences that treat people as adults instead of going to mom and dad.
* True, boring fact.
Here’s an amazing, novel idea that might just work:
Let the students drink at bars where business-owners can monitor how much they’re being served. You’ll be amazed at how much fewer 18-year-olds will chug straight from a bottle of vodka when supervising adults are around.
Since cheapshotBob is paying for all these (freeloading) kids to go to college with his oppressively high taxes, WSU should call him when they have a troubled drunk kid on their hands.
@1
Yes, and introduce kids to drinking at home – wine or beer with dinner, in moderation – and they can learn to assess what alcohol does to them, in small/reasonable doses, in the safety of the home.
Those “kids” are adults. The school shouldn’t be calling mom.
How about treating underaged people that get caught drinking on campus the same as you treat underaged kids who get caught drinking off campus.
“I didn’t have a drop of alcohol my entire 4 years of college”
You were stoned the whole time?
@2 Best idea I’ve heard today.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to pay $4 million for shooting a man and his pregnant wife 11 times. No search warrant, no warning, the cops busted into their house with guns glazing — at wrong house. An LASD internal investigation concluded the cops were “justified” did nothing wrong, probably because the victims’ last name is Mendez.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/n.....59461.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: America has too many trigger-happy cops, and not enough cops who understand their job is to protect us, not shoot us. You and I are probably paying for this, because it raises every police department’s insurance rates, and if it doesn’t stop eventually all police departments will be uninsurable.
As usual, taxpayers will pay millions for stupid cops who’ll keep their jobs. There is a gross lack of police accountability of police. Anyone working for a private corporation who screwed up like that would be on the curb in 30 seconds.
Of course, if you’re a stupid cop who gets fired for shooting a pregnant woman and killing her fetus, the thing to do is sue the county (i.e., taxpayers) for doing a lousy job of training you to be a cop. Oh, and throw in an emotional distress claim, too, because shooting pregnant women is inherently very stressful.
http://articles.latimes.com/19.....-officials
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Okay, so this is an old news story, but has anything changed in 28 years? Not really. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The taxpayer gets screwed at both ends of the legal spectrum by these clowns.
Why aren’t the wingnut mouthbreathers up in arms about this – not about the woman, but about the sacred fetus.
@4
Continued….
You also need to disband campus police forces and have the local police force open a substation on campus that the campus’ help pay for. The campus police officers aren’t the problem. The problem is that campus’ have a conflict of interest in being in charge of their own police force. If police do their job and make arrests it makes the campus look bad, so there’s pressure to not make arrests and campus’ become poorly policed.
Most of the binge drinking problems occur with freshmen/sophomores, younger students away from the constraints of home but not yet ready for the responsibilities of adulthood and college success. The university has a legal responsibility to provide a safe environment for “not quite adults” under its supervision. If it does not inform parents the university becomes culpable.
It seems that notwithstanding the not-exactly-gentle behavior of some of Seattle’s finest in recent years, there’s a concern about increasing crime downtown. This comes not only from the Seattle Times but anectdotally from people I know who live and/or work downtown.