I don’t mean to pooh-pooh this article. As a mother of future college students (I hope), a culture that promotes dangerous behavior is worrisome. But perhaps quite a bit of my concern stems from personal experience where I can soberly and seriously consider my own college behavior and say, “My goodness, that was stupid!”

Certainly, through the grace of God and not my own savvy or inner strength, I survived. But survive I did.

I can’t help but wonder who the alarmists are who are responsible for this article and the research that went into it. Are they people who themselves rarely drank, never skipped class in order to recover from the previous night, never did homework half-lit? Or are they ones who were funneling yards of beer while the entire frat house chanted, “CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!”? Does puritanical disdain or the sagacity of experience motivate their panic?

The report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, argues substance abuse isn’t an inevitable rite of passage for young adults. Rather, it argues a particular culture of excessive consumption has flourished on college campuses, and calls on educators to take bolder stands against students and alumni to combat it.

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Young adults in general have higher abuse rates, so a higher rate for college students is to be expected. But other research indicates that college students drink more than high school peers who don’t go to college.

Is this truly shocking? A 20 year old in college drinks more than a 20 year old not in college? Could it be that the non-college student has to get up and go to work or risk being fired, while the college student can blow off Professor Peabody’s chemistry lecture without anyone even noticing?

At the University of Kentucky, longtime administrator Victor Hazard says he too has noticed a change, with more students drinking simply to get drunk.

“To the extent there is such a thing as a social drinker, it was more of a meet-and-greet type of environment in the earlier years when I was here,” said Hazard, Kentucky’s associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

Now, he said, students are “drinking to become intoxicated as fast as they possibly can.”

Ah, yes, when I was a student, we only drank socially. These hoodlums of today just want to get drunk. Sorry, buddy, take off the rose-colored glasses. Even if you yourself did not participate in binge drinking or illegal drug use, surely you were aware of others who did? Or did you wear those rosy lenses back then, too?

“It’s getting more intense,” she said. “Drinking games that were happening in private parties or houses or bonfires 10 years ago are now happening in public venues. That to me reflects a sort of larger acceptance of extreme drinking.”

Either I went to the best kept secret of party schools (it didn’t make the Top Party School list when I was there), or the woman who said this lived at home and didn’t experience campus life in its fullest…or spent her free time in the library or dorm studying. Or she’s 80.

And the concluding quote:

“People need to step up and realize this is not a rite of passage, this is not something we should tolerate. If it keeps going, we’re going to destroy our best and brightest.”

How bright are you if you kill yourself with booze or get yourself addicted to prescription drugs? Here is the bottom line: it is not the campus culture that is victimizing helpless students. These are adults making personal choices. If your “friends” are pressuring you to drink an entire bottle of vodka, find different friends. If there are no sober people to be found on campus, find another campus.

And if you are a parent, I suggest you encourage your children to seek a Bachelor of Science degree. In my experience, the workload required to cut it in those programs naturally reduces the opportunity for binge drinking. It’s all those Bachelor of Arts students with excessive free time who are out drinking 3 or 4 times a week!