Parent to parent: Talk about alcohol and parties

By Jeff Hudson

My hunch is that almost every parent sending a son or daughter off to college experiences at least a moment of dread when contemplating the prospect of parties and alcohol.

Maybe it’s the memory of something that you did in college and lived to regret. Or maybe it was an episode you witnessed, or heard about, involving someone else.

Thomas Vander Ven, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Ohio University, takes on the topic of college drinking in Getting Wasted, published last month by NYU Press. He interviewed hundreds of students who drank to excess.

“They’re 18- to 22-year-olds. They’re away from the supervision of their parents, many of them for the first time, and that’s an important time in life to search for identity,” Vander Ven told Salon. “And for my informants, alcohol was a vehicle for hooking up and meeting people and having romantic and sexual interactions. It’s sort of a perfect storm to produce this high-risk behavior.”

Among Vander Ven’s findings: Students whose parents actually talk to them about drinking too much in college are less likely to binge when they get to school.

Several of my friends have 18-year-old sons or daughters embarking on the freshman year of college this fall. They all expressed a common concern. To paraphrase: I know they’re going to find themselves in situations where there will be a lot of alcohol at some big party. I just hope I’ve done a good enough job as a parent.

Talking to my twins

Several of these friends, knowing that I’ve got twin sons who marked their 21st birthday in February, asked me how I’d handled that milestone. I told them that I’d talked with my sons several weeks before their birthday, and I’d urged them to be careful.

I also gave my sons a rather blunt reminder of the UC Davis student who died of alcohol poisoning after consuming 21 drinks in a downtown bar to celebrate his 21st birthday in 2000.

I didn’t press my sons for too many details about what they had planned for their 21st birthday. When the day came, one of my sons brought home a moderately upscale bottle of wine and a nice loaf of French bread from a local bakery. After visiting with mom and dad for a bit, my sons then went out for dinner with friends. I made no attempt to check up on them. The next day, life went on as before.

But the topic of drinking at parties didn’t go away. Last April, a 22-year-old UC Davis graduate suffered what proved to be a fatal injury as the result of a dare during a private house party following the campus’s annual Picnic Day open house. According to investigators, the young man, who had been drinking, challenged several friends to hit him and then hit one of them. When one of the friends hit him back, he suffered a freak rupture of a major artery, and he died the following day in the hospital.

My mind flashed back to that April tragedy when, during the summer, my sons informed me they were organizing a “Beowulf party” that involved bottles of mead (honey wine) and opportunities for guests to take turns reading parts of the epic poem aloud in the original Old English. I graciously left the house to them, and the evening passed without incident.

Drinking is a subject that’s never easy for a college parent to discuss. My advice is to be candid and not too long-winded.

Safe Party Initiative

Information, too, always helps, and UC Davis has resources for students and parents who want more information on the topic of alcohol and parties. The Safe Party Initiative is a collaboration with the city of Davis to reduce problems associated with drinking among college students and to support party safety. Its website outlines best practices for safe and successful parties for hosts and party-goers, explains liabilities for social hosts, and provides information about laws and campus policies related to alcohol and parties.

UC Davis’ Student Health and Counseling Services offers assessment and intervention services for alcohol, tobacco and other drug issues. The campus provides leadership to the community’s Davis Alcohol andOther Drugs Advisory Group.

At this time of year, you may want to encourage your student to attend a free campus event that encourages students to meet new friends and have fun in an alcohol-free environment. The Buzz — featuring music, carnival booths, games, crafts, giveaways and food — will be held on the Quad from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sept. 23.