I found an article that discusses how many universities have taken up new policies with regard to informing parents about their children's underage drinking. They stated that most colleges will alert parents for major problems, such as being hospitalized or taken to the police station, however they do not involve parents for minor transgressions such as being caught with alcohol in their dorm. Some schools have decided to inform parents of every alcohol or drug related issue that involves underage students. Their reasoning behind this is that alcohol abuse on campuses has become a major issue and they feel that parental intervention could be one way to prevent it. Many students simply do not agree with this policy.
I don't know about you, but I would have been very scared to be caught underage drinking if I knew the school would notify my parents. My parent's and I have a very open relationship and they pretty much know what I do, but they would be very disappointed if they received a letter or phone call from the school. I think that this is pretty normal and I think a lot of people would greater fear the negative repercussions of underage drinking if their parents were involved.
I think that the greater problem here is people's motivation to not only drink, but to actually abuse alcohol. The percentage of people on campuses that do abuse alcohol is actually much smaller than what many people think. I think that a lot of times the media and even peers make excessive drinking seem very normal and like it is something that "everyone is doing", however this is not necessarily the case. It is important to change people's perceptions of drinking to reduce the cases of serious alcohol problems.
This relates to the idea of cognitive dissonance, if people's beliefs of student's drinking activities do not match their actions they will become very uncomfortable with their actions. Therefore, if people did not have the idea that everyone was out drinking every weekend they would probably not be as likely to engage in this sort of behavior.
The idea of including parents in student drinking is something that may or may not be effective. This idea is assuming that every student would be extrinsically motivated not to drink based on fear of negative repercussions from their parents, however the negative repercussions already exist in the form of trouble with school and law enforcement. The fact is not that student's do not fear getting in trouble, this is simply not enough motivation for them not to engage in their illegal activities because the chance of getting caught is just that, a chance. Many student's that take the chance of drinking underage are not influenced by extrinsic factors, such as getting caught. Their motivation likely lies within themselves and therefore change needs to be based on internal factors, not external such as calling mommy and daddy.
So I wonder, what could schools do to intrinsically motivate students not to engage in these dangerous activities? My advise would be to change their perception of the amount of student's drinking, but I wonder what else could be done?
Here's the link if you would like to read the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022302195.html
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