Fake IDs and Binge Drinking: Good Idea?

Today I read an article about a student I used to be friends with.  I would post the link but I don’t want to embarrass or hurt the student.  They were arrested last Saturday morning for public drunkenness and underage drinking.  The student was holding a fake identification and was put in a holding cell until sober.

I was recently going to trash the new social policy and explain my stance that it is causing off campus parties to become out of control and an unsafe environment for underage drinkers.  But this article has affected me so much I have to address binge drinking as a problem.

Fake IDs are popular among my community at Lehigh.  I have begun to notice a trend in the types of people who carry them.  I have personal friends who have fake IDs, and I know how they act in the social situations presented to them at Lehigh.  Getting in trouble for underage drinking is a huge problem here, and though I would like to blame the social policy, I must decline because there is a larger factor that has been a problem: Binge Drinking.

Lehigh is known for a party school but that does not mean every weekend you have to go insane and blackout chugging bottles of bankers.  Your body doesn’t need that much alcohol.  It’s unsafe and unhealthy.  Stop pre-gaming with 16 shots and maybe you’ll make it out passed 12 a.m.  I’m embarrassed at times to go out with friends who part take in this kind of behavior.  I'm tired of walking to class at 9 a.m. and occasionally spotting a person with no shoes on, we know you got obliterated last night and you woke up in those clothes with no shoes.

Here’s a Psychology Experiment that was conducted: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2711502/.

The description explained it is “a sample of 3,720 undergraduates was assessed the summer prior to college entrance and during the 4 semesters comprising freshman and sophomore years.” The experimenters were researching relationship “between consumption and fake ID ownership. Sex, Greek membership, and prior drinking were controlled.”

Here’s some serious stories that happened to college students with fake ID businesses:

http://www.collegeotr.com/james_madison_university/jmu_student_not_mclovin_his_jail_sentence_for_fake_id_business_11895

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/07/02/fake-ids.htm

Another friendly note not to hit:

 And don't look like: