Booze, books, and God
According to a study done by USA Today, just under half (49%) of college freshmen spend more time drinking (and we’re not talking about Starbucks) than they do studying.
70% of freshman students said they had drank an alcoholic beverage within the past 14 days.
When asked about how much time was devoted to drinking (parties with alcohol, going to bars [remember, these are freshmen…so this is illegal going to bars], drinking at home/in dorm), the average was 10 hours drinking.
This is opposed to about 8.5 hours studying. That means that the book is getting visited for about 1.5 hours less than the bottle.
I’m not opposed to drinking like some campus ministers might be. I think it’s a dangerous thing, but something that will almost always be a part of this “late adolescence” that people are going through. If you choose to abstain, that’s great, I just don’t expect it out of everyone I serve.
Rather than abstinance, I approach alcohol with the question of moderation. I think this could actually be something regarded as unique within a Lutheran campus ministry as half of the other campus ministries I know hold up abstaining from alcohol as the law of God.
Lutherans, rather, see that there are two kinds of Bible verses about alcohol:
a.) Psalm 104:15 “…wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.”
and
b.) Psalm 60:3 “…you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger.”
The issue isn’t as much about drinking or not drinking, but about how much and for how long….and what kinds of idiotic places it gets you into (Lot, Abraham’s nephew, ends up sleeping with his own daughters because of too much wine in Genesis 19…yikes).
Yet most Lutheran campus ministries I know choose to either treat this as:
a.) a non-issue completely out of the hands of the church and its advising role, after all, that’s “their decision”
b.) an issue where we suddenly become Baptist and talk about alcohol as if the devil brews our beer
Neither approach is one of moderation. It either over-compensates for figures like USA Today gave us, saying “well, they’re drinking already, if we talk more about it being allowable, they’ll all be in AA by the time they’re 22,” or it under-compensates the same figures assuming that somehow the people in YOUR campus ministry buck all of the national trends…the little angels that they are.
Teaching moderation could lead you in some places that could get really interesting. It’s certainly not a black and white issue and could be filled with paradoxes, but those paradoxes may be worth visiting:
a.) drinking with your students - seriously, if you’re not breaking any laws and you think you can be a role model for moderation - why not?
b.) not drinking with your students - similarly, sometimes your position as a role model is to turn down a drink when you don’t feel like having one, making it ok for other people not to have one
c.) freedom and personal responsbility
d.) the acknowledgment of consequences that come with freedom
e.) helping people on your campus not involved with your campus ministry (at least right now) grapple with the tough decisions that moderation brings with it
f.) giving people the right to make the choice to abstain, and making that choice an easier option on your campus
So what do you think? How do you think we can address the topic of moderation in our campus ministries and on the campuses of our colleges and universities? What are some of the issues that surround the question? If you’re a student, when have you felt comfortable, uncomfortable, or even ignored when it came to this issue?
Link: A great study on college students and substance abuse on campus by Columbia University (pdf)