The View From 1776

Today’s College Campus Life: Games Students Play

By Marie Jon

Soon, college students from all over America will start the fall semester. Freshman orientation will begin and there will be a mad dash to join (some not too wholesome) fraternities and sororities. Why degrade a college tradition? Because a good number of the social frat and sorority houses have become perverted “deprogramming” institutions whose mission is to undo everything that conscientious parents have strived to teach their kids through the years they’ve lived under their tutelage.

Be aware that college has trappings that include all the rituals of campus life. If you have not had a long heart-to-heart talk with your child who is about to enter a secular college, it could be their undoing. Every possible temptation is laid out before them like a buffet. Most institutions of higher learning are liberal and secular; consequently, they have become ultra-permissive bastions of the MTV lifestyle.

Drinking is just one of the issues with which your student will be confronted. They will also be encouraged to engage in sexual hookups, and with that activity the risk of a myriad of sexually-transmitted diseases. So what are the latest games being played on campuses?

Excerpt from TIME: The War Against Beer Pong

“Beer Pong is a virtual rendition of the popular college drinking game that requires players to toss Ping-Pong balls across a table and into a cup of beer (if your cup is hit, you drink). The game was designed for the popular Nintendo Wii platform, and its maker had planned to release it as the first game in its new Frat Party Games series. But concerned parents began sending angry letters to JV Games and Nintendo — Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal even got in on the action, sending his own missives to the companies — until JV Games agreed to change the title of the game to Pong Toss and fill its pixelated cups with water.

“‘We never anticipated such a severe reaction to the word beer,’ says Jag Jaegar, co-owner of JV Games, which released Pong Toss on July 28 with a kid-friendly rating of T for teen.

“The controversy isn’t entirely surprising. The point of beer pong is to get your friends drunk — and parents and university administrators generally frown on that sort of thing. Last fall, Georgetown University banned beer pong, specially made beer-pong tables and inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls and any other alcohol-related paraphernalia in its on-campus dorms — even in the rooms of students of legal drinking age. The University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Tufts University have also banned drinking games. ‘We’re pleased that Tufts has put this in writing,’ says Michelle Bowdler, a health administrator at the school. ‘Although we understand that twenty one is the legal drinking age, we don’t want our students participating in activities that could do excessive harm to themselves or others.” http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1828085,00.html

Common to the verbiage of campus life these days is a term called “pregaming.” Pregaming — risky behavior that involves dorm room or off-campus apartment drinking — is practiced by underage students who cannot legally buy or consume alcohol. Their asinine goal is to drink as much booze as possible before going out to “Party Hardy.”

Binge drinking — excess for its own sake — is encouraged by other students. As a result, hospitalization of their peers for acute alcohol poisoning is becoming practically epidemic. It is not unusual for some students to down as many as twenty-two shots of vodka while in a dorm room waiting with their friends to start a weekend of partying. Poisoning resulting from the intake of such massive quantities of alcohol in a short span of time has become widespread on campuses across the nation. Approximately three hundred students die each year.

A few college officials have advocated declaring their campuses dry and shutting down fraternity houses. Others believe that enforcement of the minimum drinking age of twenty-one is the solution. While these would indeed be helpful awareness and more education is the answer to this deadly dilemma.

The alcohol industry perpetuates the myth that the Europeans have the correct approach pertaining to alcoholic-related problems amongst their youth and citizenry. Europe has the same percentage of alcoholism as we have in America. If parents do not drink, it is more likely that neither will their children. Alcohol is a potentially addictive substance that also causes many health problems.

Data from recent surveys shows no evidence that young Europeans drink more responsibly than their counterparts in the U.S. Of 35 European countries, only Turkey reported less alcohol abuse among youth than the U.S.

In 1988, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) successfully lobbied Congress to make it mandatory for all states to mandate a drinking age of twenty-one or risk losing Federal highway funds. All 50 states complied, thus saving many lives. As it stands, three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetimes.

Since alcohol use is thoroughly ingrained in so many cultures, many spiritually-grounded people do not understand the benefits of total abstinence from alcoholic beverages. Potential alcoholism and the grave misadventures connected with overindulgence are not the only pitfalls associated with alcohol overuse. Alcohol as a chemical is harmful to every organ in the human body in addition to having the tendency to compromise inhibitions and judgment.

Teach your children well by example and save them from emotional distress or worse, death. Keeping yourself healthy and fit is biblical. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

Marie Jon is a political/religious-based writer and founder of http://www.DrawingClose.org — a sister website to RenewAmerica. Marie extends her hand of welcome; visit DrawingClose and receive your free gift of salvation by taking an online Bible study.

© Copyright 2008 by Marie Jon