Check out this video.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
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Here’s the transcript if you’d like to read it:

I’m here right now on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University. This is a Methodist – traditionally Methodist university in Delaware, Ohio, which is just north of Columbus. Ohio Wesleyan University is a nice mix of Liberal Arts, and Business, and Pre-Professional Education; about 2,000 students. So it’s a very nice, intimate, little campus.

Ohio Wesleyan has a reputation for being a party school, and it’s true that it has a very important fraternity and sorority program of Greek life here. The administration is often trying to rein the Greek system in and make sure that alcohol use is under control. But I think it would be unfair to say that Ohio Wesleyan is a party school. I think pretty much every campus in America is a party school in one way or another.

There are somewhere alcohol plays a relatively minor role, but really any campus is going to have alcohol available. So, for the student who makes good choices – I think that’s what we have to think about when we’re thinking about party schools. Are students prepared and able to make good choices once they arrive on a college campus?

Now, if a student is unable to make those choices and is turned loose, shall we say, on campus, whether it’s Ohio Wesleyan or any other university campus in America. Yes, they’re going to make some bad choices and end up getting fined and maybe put on probation, as Ohio Wesleyan sometimes does. But really, if you make good choices, if you remember that college is about your education and not just about partying. Then you’re going to get a great education at a place like Ohio Wesleyan.

Now, opportunities are terrific. There are small class sizes and really good relationships with professors. The opportunities are here. But the opportunities also are here for getting into trouble. So that’s really the case at any college campus.

As you’re making choices about which school? Yes, you can decide whether you want the Greek system or whether you don’t want the Greek system. But what you really need to decide is, how are you going to stay on track academically and achieve your goals educationally. So that that will propel you into your future?

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The fact is that these rankings are sometimes manipulated by students on campuses. For example, there is some indication that Penn State students pushed one another on various Facebook groups to vote for their school (the rankings are derived from online student surveys).

Are these rankings valid? Probably not, in a statistical sense. And as I have said, nearly every college is a party school in one sense or another.

But the folks at Princeton Review do point out that the schools at the top of the party school list have been fairly consistent over time.  (There also is quite a lot of overlap between Playboy‘s list and the Princeton Review‘s list).  They also point to the fact that Brigham Young University has been at the top of their “Stone Cold Sober” list for 12 years in a row. So perhaps there is a grain of truth in these rankings.

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Sometimes my clients (or rather, the parents of my clients) ask me to find a school for their student that is not a “party school.” However, with few exceptions, nearly every school is a party school. Young people between the ages of 18 and 22 are prone toward experimentation. They take risks. They push boundaries. Intellectually and academically. Of course, we want our kids to take risks and push boundaries: this is how they grow and develop. But with alcohol, we’d prefer to save kids from this propensity to explore.

Yet as parents, we must embrace the likelihood that the overwhelming majority of our kids will experiment with alcohol at some point—no matter which college or university they attend.

And so parents are nervous that drinking on campus is somehow worse than it used to be. However, we should know that the Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that the incidence of  binge drinking on campus has remained fairly stable over time.

We cannot, therefore, control everything our child does when the go off to college. But we can select the institution where this experimentation will take place.

And different colleges have different approaches to alcohol consumption. Which approach fits the student best?

I recently spent a day visiting two colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California. Interestingly, both colleges made a point of communicating their institutional policies toward the consumption of alcohol. And the two could not be more different in their approach.

“Open Door” Alcohol Policy

One has an “open door” policy. This college pledges to uphold state law prohibiting underage drinking. However, the college also takes a practical approach–they recognize that underage drinking is going to happen not matter what. Therefore students are told that if they are going to consume alcohol in their residence halls, they must keep their doors open. They are not to drink in private or in secret. Therefore, peers can keep an eye not so much on consumption, but on the anti-social and sometimes dangerous behaviors that result from over-consumption.

Furthermore, students are told that if any student becomes ill as a result of alcohol consumption, they are to take the student immediately to the Resident Advisors in the dorms, with a “no questions asked” policy: The emphasis is on the safety and welfare of the student, and not on prohibition and punishment.

Alcohol Policy from Dry Campus

A few hours later, I got to visit another campus. The approach could not have been more different. The campus is strict. Very strict. The College operates a small campus pub, where students aged 21 and over can drink alcohol. In fact, the college gives it away to students—with some restrictions (no more than one drink per hour, for example). However, underage students who are caught drinking on campus are severely punished. The first time students are caught, they are given a strong warning. The second offense can result in expulsion, and the Provost of the college asserted that students have been thrown out of the college for underage drinking.

Yet the effect of this policy, as the provost admitted, has been to drive underage drinking off campus into student apartments near the college. There, campus police have no jurisdiction. And, the municipal authorities have little interest in catching students with a bottle of beer—unless those students’ behavior disturbs the peace. And some may argue (as have the members of the Amethyst Initiative), draconian alcohol policies that tolerate no underage drinking are actually contributing to antisocial and dangerous behaviors among their students.

How to Make Your Decision

So which sort of approach is best? I certainly have my own views, but students and parents have to consider which kind of approach they think best.

It’s important to note, however, that just because a campus is “dry” (no alcohol of any sort is allowed on campus, even for students of legal age) as a matter of policy does not mean it is dry in actual fact. I recently visited a buttoned-down Baptist university with a dry campus. The tour guide confided in me that his fraternity was on probation because of repeated violations of the alcohol policy (this campus, apparently has a strong policy that is weakly enforced).

The fact is that drugs and alcohol are readily available on nearly every campus in the United States. Furthermore, the fact is that most students, at one point or another, will experiment with alcohol.  Students and parents need to discuss these facts during high school, and during the college selection process.

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