Across the state, parents have ponied up rental deposits for their high school seniors' upcoming beach week in Ocean City. What fun in the sun is in store for the newly graduated?
According to Urban Dictionary, the online source for anyone who isn't clear on the latest lingo, beach week is "More of an east-coast tradition in which freshly graduated seniors travel to the beach to get belligerently hammered, hook up with chicks, and sun bathe."
If you have a senior, you may argue your little muffin wouldn't engage in such antics. Ha! Read a Twitter feed and get a clue.
Good kids, even exceptionally good kids who write their graduation thank you notes without prodding, are affected by their culture. And this generation's culture includes a disturbing pastime: binge drinking, which is characterized by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as imbibing enough to reach a blood alcohol content of 0.08 within two hours. Typically, this means four drinks for women, and five drinks for men. The NIAAA reports that half of college students who drink alcohol binge drink.
Among young adults, binge drinking is considered normal social behavior. Within this norm, independent judgment often takes a backseat to a pack mentality and otherwise bright, principled kids not only blur lines of healthy choice but obliterate them through risky personal conduct. The goal of beach week is to become that social norm, belligerently hammered. Some teens will abstain, but not many.
Alcohol consumption is often regarded as a rite of passage, most likely because it's illegal in most instances to drink before the age of 21. Graduation supposedly launches teenagers into adulthood and provides the perfect pretext to ignore the law and allow underage drinking.
Last year, Maryland's former attorney general and a candidate for governor, Doug Gansler, was caught in a media kerfuffle over a picture that showed his appearance at a senior beach week party in Delaware. It seemed, from the red drinking cups captured in the photo, that underage drinking had occurred.
Mr. Gansler's initial response was, "How is that relevant to me? … The question is, do I have any moral authority over other people's children at beach week in another state? I say no." He then changed his mind: "There could be Kool-Aid in the red cups, but there's probably beer in the red cups," he said. And "there's no question I have a moral responsibility over other people's children."
Did the attorney general choose to be an oblivious parent instead of a legal authority? Parents are often tentative to discuss or monitor underage drinking for myriad reasons but usually because, they, too, drank as teenagers. Mr. Gansler's mealy-mouthed explanation may have cost him votes in his primary run for governor (he lost), but many of his critics are parents and hypocrites. Like the former attorney general, they chose willful ignorance.
Informed parents understand the intent of beach week and exercise responsible judgment by saying no to sending their kids into an environment that cultivates intense and unsafe partying. Industrious graduates will come up with an alternative celebration to chugging beer on the beach and holding one another's hair while they vomit. If beach week didn't occur, sober tourism dollars would kick off the season in Ocean City, mitigating a strenuous week of corralling, babysitting and prosecuting drunk kids.
How do we change the culture of binge drinking among teens and young adults? Arming them with reliable facts so they're able to make informed decisions is an essential start.
NIAAA's annual statistics are sobering. You should share them with your kids:
•Roughly 5,000 people under age 21 die each year from alcohol-related car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning and other injuries such as falls, burns and drowning.
•Over 1,800 college students between the ages of 18-24 die each year from alcohol related unintentional injuries.
•More than 690,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking.
•More than 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol related sexual assault or date rape.
•About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall.
Shaun Borsh is a freelance writer living in Columbia. Her email is nsborsh@verizon.net.