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Old 01-31-2018, 09:52 PM
panhelrose panhelrose is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 57
Speaking from a university standpoint, I was a student orientation leader for my school a few years ago, and part of the program involved teaching the incoming students about drinking, drugs, and what to do if someone needs help. We have protocols in place, for instance, where a student won't get in trouble for drinking underage if they're calling the university EMT service to help out their friend who's too drunk, so that students aren't more worried about their own punishment than the more dire consequences.

However, we did face some pushback from parents during one of the discussion sections we had about that information session, because the parents said the university shouldn't be encouraging students to drink underage. The way our Dean of Students put it, we know many incoming freshman will experiment with alcohol underage, so it's better to teach them how to be safe and how to protect each other from dangerous behavior, than to pretend it doesn't happen at all.

On the fraternity/sorority standpoint, I think acknowledging underage drinking, teaching safe drinking habits, and putting protocols in place to protect students trying to help their friends would definitely curb this issue, but I doubt we'll see many fraternities saying "well we know you're drinking underage, so here's what to do," etc, etc.
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