Universities Gone Wild!!!

Approximately one hundred presidents of America's best-known universities signed a petition to have the drinking age lowered!!! Read all about it by clicking the post title. The West has lost its mind. And the saddest part of our cultural mental meltdown is that it is happening at universities.

The university presidents think this will actually help stem the college binge drinking epidemic. A movement leader said, "college students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it's illegal." Not being culturists, perhaps they have not recognized cultural diversity. In many cultures college students are not heavy drinkers. If they had any education they would realize binge drinking in universities is recent, American and not something we must accept as inevitable.

Education is supposed to change people. University, once upon a time, had the mission of making people more civilized and refined. If we accept the fact that elite universities cannot even stop youth from binge drinking, then what exactly is its function? If education is so ineffective, why waste money on it?

Well, we do not (I can hear some say) go to university to get refined, its for a job. The degree and maybe some acquired skills will translate into money. Unfortunately, we live in a culture. Having no moral standards whatsoever is NOT conducive to a thriving economy. Note that the paper diplomas no longer guarentee you a job as industry has fled. And, part of the reason industry has fled is that the universities have stopped inculcating values and a sense of loyalty to the Western tradition.

At some level, the universities are right. Education does not translate immediately into behavior. We absorb the cultural assumptions of our surroundings via adoption of what is expected and given status. If universities want to regain any sense of esteem, lectures about drinking will not do it. Rather, universities must use culturist methods to regain their value, values and traditional role in society.

The presidents of America's top 100 universities should sign a pledge that any student caught too drunk to drive during the school year will be automatically expelled from the university. That will stop the problem dead in its tracks. Students will quickly learn that universities are places that value sobriety. That done, universities can once again symbolically teach America that we value the life of the mind and self-control.