From the sound of Phil Aubart's Tuesday column ("A Master Misinterpretation," Aug. 5) all of you back on campus are pretty peeved that the administration supposedly spied on and broke up the Masters tournament. Well, if you actually believe that the Dartmouth wonderland is a secret anti-alcohol puritanical society bent on ruining your fun, let me take you on a little tour of the outside world.
Like little pockmarks spreading across America's face, newfangled "social host laws" are being enacted by cities large and small, from gigantic San Diego to my hometown, Mission Viejo, Calif. These laws are the newest symptom of our nation's chronic beer-phobia, and nasty to say the least. The long and short of it is your parents can be fined and/or jailed for any underage drinking that takes place in their home, even if they're just privately furnishing alcohol to their children. Some of the particularly virulent strains of the law even make parents accountable if they're not present for or aware of the drinking.
Why would any community pass needlessly oppressive laws like this? Well, I thought of interviewing the major think-tanks promoting this legislation as a way to easily fill up the rest of this column, but last weekend I decided that I'd much rather spite said think-tanks and wound up having far too many drinks to write coherent sentences. Instead, quotes will have to suffice.
The University of Minnesota's Alcohol Epidemiology Program (AEP) writes on its website that "Social host liability laws may act as a strong deterrent if providers believe that they will be sued if injury or death occurs as a result of the provision of alcohol to an obviously intoxicated person."
I don't pretend to suppose that drunk driving is some time-honored American pastime, but ever since the "Red Asphalt" driver's education movies ("You race some guy to the stoplight, YOU DIE!"), we've gotten a little too paranoid. "Don't drink and drive" is a very good rule of thumb, but we're crossing the line when we start legislating people's behavior within their own homes to prevent drunk driving, especially when fines and jail time are used as "deterrents" (read: threats).
One of the costs of living in a society is that we have to take responsibility for each other's actions sometimes. You can live as virtuous a life as you please, but if your neighbor wants to take a page from "Amelie" and jump off a tall tower onto your child...well, you have my genuine sympathy, but we can't go around changing the building codes for you. If you're having trouble noticing the silver lining, just remember the same free society has also developed handy things like refrigeration and antibiotics.
And what about the 68 percent of traffic fatalities that don't involve alcohol? There don't seem to be any watch groups for them other than the highway patrol, so are their tragedies any less real? Perhaps we should ban automobiles for them and, while we're at it, wrap everyone up in straitjackets for maximum security.
In case that last one wasn't alarming enough, here's another clearly condescending quote from the AEP's website: "Some adults believe underage drinking is just part of growing up and therefore think it is acceptable to give alcohol to underage people."
Wait, are they trying to imply that underage drinking isn't a part of growing up? Well here I was under the impression that the purpose of parenthood was to teach children how to operate in society in a controlled environment. That's why my parents taught me to drive in a parking lot instead of simply tossing me on the freeway, and also why they gave me the infamous "sex talk" instead of tossing me naked into a dark room with a supportive "Go get 'em!"
If all of America's children were forced to wait until age 21 to have a drink, then we'd have the exact same problem with a different age group. People are much more likely to own and drive a car at 21 than at 16, and only a fool would think that such people would be averse to driving under the influence without being taught otherwise.
If there's anything we should be doing, it's encouraging families to drink with their children so that alcohol is perceived as a real drink, not some mystical elixir for shameless grinding and easy sex. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get drunk with my parents while it's still legal so they'll be in a good mood when I show them how much tuition is this year.
