College Alcohol Use Essay

Summary: Argumentative essay on the topic of drinking on campus. Compares the consequences versus the benefits of alcohol consumption by college students. Drinking on campus is a problem that affects most college students, either directly or indirectly. I, for one, am against drinking on campus. As a student of Stevens Institute of Technology, I can say that drinking on campus is as rampant as a fire in a toothpick factory. Several friends of mine at colleges around the country tell me that their schools face the same problems. Here, at Stevens, much to the college community’s surprise, we had a snow day in February. The night before our well-deserved day off, a Tuesday, most of the general Stevens populous got drunk. That wouldn’t have been so bad if everyone locked themselves in their rooms and drank to their liver’s content, but it was not so. In addition to getting wasted, everyone partied all night, with music blasting and partiers yelling. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good night for anyone trying to get some sleep. The whole night wasn’t wasted though; it was fun watching inhibition-less people wander around. On a trip to the bathroom, I saw one guy making a fool of himself trying to get together with this girl. Ten minutes later, that same person walked into my room and sat down on my chair. He then told me to get out of his room. A friend of mine had a similar experience. A drunken resident stumbled into his room and fell down on his bed, saying, â€Å"I think I’ll crash here tonight. † Luckily, he got up and decided to leave before my friend beat the alcohol out of him. Upon reaching the door, it took him a good 10 seconds before he realized that the knob was on the other side. While I realize that college students generally don’t have it easy and they need to unwind every now and then, large consumption of alcohol simply isn’t the answer. I suppose it’s OK to go out and have a drink every now and then, but many people take that to an extreme. Plain and simple, the statistics disfavor drinking on campus. Perhaps the most stunning statistic is the fact that fourteen-hundred college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four die each year from unintentional, alcohol-related injuries, the majority of which includes car crashes. That’s not surprising when coupled with the fact that 2. 1 million students drove under the influence last year. Five hundred thousand more are inadvertently injured under the influence of alcohol and six hundred thousand students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. Approximately twenty-five percent of college students accredit low academic performance to alcohol and thirty-one percent of students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse. Another huge impact of alcohol is sexual abuse. In excess of seventy-thousand students fell victim to alcohol-related rape and sexual assault. Four hundred thousand students had unprotected sex and twenty five percent of them say they were too drunk to even remember if they consented to it. Property damage is another plague brought unto colleges by alcohol abuse, especially here at Stevens, where several card-readers that allow access to residence halls were destroyed on several occasions. Around eleven percent of student drinkers say they have committed vandalism of property while drunk. Many administrators also report that their campuses have an increasing problem with alcohol-related property damage. Alcohol inevitably leads to health problems. More than one hundred and fifty thousand students develop alcohol-related health problems and almost 1. 5% of these students have attempted suicide. Five percent of college students are involved with the police for alcohol-related issues and an estimated one hundred and ten thousand students have been arrested as a result of their drinking. In conclusion, although I recognize the pro- side to this debatable issue, I think that the consequences of drinking far outweigh the pleasures. Drinking should not be allowed on college campuses.