FREE ESSAY ON A WORLD OF INTOXIFICATION

A WORLD OF INTOXIFICATION

Michael Martin
Professor D.
11/30/1999
Hum. 101
A world of intoxification
Screams pierced the midnight air and students ran wildly about the campus. Police cars
whizzed by with their sirens blaring in the night. Glass was being broken and girls were
being defiled. Confusion was all around and no one could stop it. This is an average
night at any given university in America. The similarities between a horror story and a
story about a college party are too many. At an average college party where alcohol is
being served there is the possibility of fights, rape, death, destruction, and jail time.
The common opinion in America is that all of these things are bad. So why do college
students continue to engage in these activities? There are three reasons. First, if
students have not been exposed to alcohol or drugs previously, when they get into that
kind of environment, they will experiment. Secondly, if everyone else who is important,
i.e. fraternities and sororities, does it, then to be important, you must drink. Finally,
without parent instilling morals and good judgment into their children, the students do
not think that it is wrong to participate in these activities. All in all, the biggest
problem on college campuses is the consumption of alcohol and drugs.
If a person was never exposed to the heat of a flame their whole life, and then was
thrown into a family barbeque, where they asked this person to cook, how well would they
do? They would probably put too much lighter fluid in the grill. Or, they would light the
grill while looking at it to see what it did. Or, they would light the grill and then put
their hand on it to see what it felt like. All of these things would cause extreme pain
to the person who did this. But, would it be their fault? Would it be their fault that
they didn't know how combustible lighter fluid was? It wouldn't be their fault if they
put their hand on it and singed the flesh off of their hand. It wouldn't be their fault
because they were never exposed to it. The same thing can be said about drinking and
drugs at college. If the person was never exposed to alcohol or drugs and they were
thrown into a place where people engage in these activities on a regular basis, of course
they would experiment. But, just as the person with the grill did, the college students
will get hurt. They will drink too much. They will drink too much because they don't know
how much is too much. The only way to avoid this happening is for parents to talk with
their children from a very small age and tell them the good and the bad effects of
alcohol. 
Parents are the most important part of a person's life. You are with your parents for at
least 18 years of your life and you talk to them for the rest of their lives. It is the
parents' responsibility to tell their children the horrors of fire. The parents tell
their children not to touch the stove because it will burn them. Why do these same
parents neglect to tell their children the horrors of the cause of over 90% of college
crimes? Why do they neglect to tell their children that alcohol rips families and people
apart? Why do the same parents that pull their children from the road and tell them to
look both ways, and then toss them to the college wolves with no knowledge of alcohol?
These parents do this because they don't know how to talk with their children about these
concerns. The parents think that their children are the smartest people on the planet,
and that they will figure it out on their own. Well, they do figure it out on their own,
with the help of the more important people on campus, fraternities and sororities.
Once mommies little boy, or daddies little girl get to college they become as little
babies again. Looking at a whole new world in which they live. This isn't the quiet town
in which they grew up, it is a world in which if you are not important, and you get
trampled on. Well, the only way to get important is to know the people that are
important. The only way to know the people that are important is to do what they do. At
college campuses, it just so happens that these important people drink and do drugs. Now,
of course not all frats and sororities participate in these activities, but as a
majority, actions like drinking and doing drugs are accepted. The scary thing is, they
are accepted by the leaders of the school, the police, the security guards, and alumni.
How are we going to tell our children that drinking and doing drugs are bad activities if
the leaders of the community endorse them! How are college freshman supposed to make the
choice to not drink if the police, teachers, and other "important" people are telling
them it is o.k. to do?
The only way that this kind of behavior on college campuses can be stopped is to entice
individualism more in the younger generation. There is no way that we can continue to
send our children out to college campuses with ideas that they should, "do what everyone
else does", and "if you don't know what to do, just follow everyone else". We must teach
our children not to listen to anyone but themselves. The parents must instill morals and
values in our children so when they listen to themselves, they realize what is best for
them and continue with that action. How many college students do you see purposely
putting their hand on a stove, or burning themselves in any way on purpose? The only ones
I see doing that are the ones that are drunk.
Bibliography
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