(The Beacon)
By Philippe Boutros, Staff Commentary -- boutros14@up.edu
In my short semester and a half here at the University of Portland, I have been to exactly 14 off-campus house parties that have been shut down by Public Safety (and only two others that have been busted by the Portland Police Bureau).
See, I do think Public Safety is providing the entire campus community with a commendable service by doing this. It's downright inhumane to expose uneducated freshmen to the likes of Keystone Light, Miller "High Life," or Natural Ice (pro tip: there's nothing natural about it).
But there is a nationwide problem that we have to address, and it isn't underage drinking. It's the whole concept of "underage." Can somebody please explain the logic behind our system?
When I turned 16, I was given a piece of plastic with my picture on it that gave me permission to drive a two-ton slab of steel at 75-miles-an-hour. When I turned 18, I was deemed wise enough to spend my money on cancer-sticks (also known as coffin nails), to sign a lifelong contract with an organization that would fly me around the world for the express purpose of killing people, to get married (in a ‘traditional' marriage, but that's another subject) and to have a kid.
However, it isn't until my hypothetical child becomes two years and three months old that I suddenly and magically become mature enough to see for myself how amazingly awful (yet unquestionably hipster) Pabst Blue Ribbon is.
That just doesn't make sense.
If you're ever bored on a Friday night and feel like a laugh, hang around in the lobby of your dorm with whoever is manning the front desk. Keep in mind that peak hours for drunk hunting are between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. Hoardes of stumbling, disheveled freshmen (if they can figure out how the front door works) will come piling in within that key time frame.
We freshmen can be pretty stupid. Away from our homes for the first time, we're responsible for everything from our eating habits (beware the Cove's chicken strips) to our grades and keeping our rooms clean(ish). College is a training ground for life, and, not to sound cliché, we learn more through our mistakes than through our successes.
This stigma against ‘underage' drinking has got to end. We have the highest drinking age in the world. The only country with a higher drinking age is Saudi Arabia (to the uninformed – alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia).
I am a fan of how UP treats underage drinking. For the most part, the people who get caught are the people who do stupid things. The parties they shut down are, for the most part, too loud and too raucously obvious.
The reason the American college system is world-renowned is because it gives people the chance to learn about how to function in the real world, under the light-handed guidance of a benevolent administration.
Our drinking policies don't fit in with that at all. I'm sure that we wouldn't have had the whole Dance of the Decades debacle if kids didn't feel the need to drink too much too quickly behind closed doors.
We wouldn't have a Bluff-tumbler if drinking were seen less as a catalyst for fun and more as a guarantee of a terrible Sunday.
Philippe Boutros is a freshman philosophy and political science major. He can be contacted at boutros14@up.edu.
