This past weekend, I took my daughters to go look at a university campus that my oldest has some interest in possibly attending next year. Weeks ago, when she mentioned she was interested in the school, she said that she heard it was a party school. I proceeded to explain that the issue with comments like this, is that good schools acquire a bad reputation because of the choices of individual students. Let's get one thing very clear, every school is a "party" school. It doesn't matter the size of the school, the requirements of admission, not the cost of tuition. If you want to find a "party" you can, every night of the week. Now, when I say "party", I don't mean a full campus rager, instead what I am referring to is a half-dozen or so students getting together either on or off-campus. Now, I will through in the caveat that a school with 40,000 students will have more "parties" than a school with 4,000 students, it's just simple math. Whether a student decides to partake, is up to the student, not the school, not even whether or not there is a party. As an adult, we have learned, mostly through trial and ERROR, that just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
It's important to remember that these are young adults who most likely haven't experience the "real" world in its entirety, as we, their parents have (ie all the consequences). They are in many cases for the first time, as the Soup Dragons sang "free to do what I want". They feel invisible, and in many ways especially when it comes to recovery, are much more so than their parents. Look at Covid, the risk of getting the virus for a young adult was no different than the risk for an older adult, however, the consequences that came after getting the virus were significantly less. College is a place to learn, not just about physics, psychology, history, or poetry; but about life. Our lives, and more importantly the label attached to our many different stages of life, are directly tied to our beliefs and actions. If a student goes to school looking to let go and live it up and then follow through with it, they can't blame the school for being a "party" school because they chose to not make it a place of higher education. There is plenty of events that occur in life "beyond our control", but most of them are our own making. Whether it is directly tied to one choice or action, or consecutive subconscious choices tied to our mindset.
