Proposal

Underage Drinking on College Campuses

How accepted is underage drinking in the DU community and in universities across the United States? Are the laws outdated and causing more harm than good?

        The 21 drinking age has always been a topic for debate in America since it was first placed in 1984. Now in 2015 the support to lower the drinking age has only grown stronger, for instance even our current president supports lowering the drinking age. This law seems no more irrelevant than on college campuses. It’s a staple of American college kids to see them chugging beer from red solo cups and various beer bong apparatus’. So it only begs the question why do we have this law?

        In this study I plan to look at the drinking culture at the University of Denver. In order to do this I want to look at aspects of drinking culture like what percentage of kids are underagedrinking, how popular it is for students to have fake ID’s. What is the ability for underage drinkers to  acquire alcohol. What do all different members of the DU community feel about the drinking culture here. What do students view underage drinking as verses professors and professional staff on campus think about it; will staffs view differ that greatly from the students?

In order to gather solid supportive data and understand of this question I plan on interviewing multiple groups on campus. Student Life and Campus Police would be able to offer great insight into this topic as they witness first hand underage drinking on campus. I plan to pick at them and find out how much they actually stand by what they are doing based on the legal drinking age. Other groups I’d like to interview on campus would definitely be people in greek life as they are the most targeted students on campus as far as drinking goes. Also would love to get non-affiliated students views such as officers in Alpine Club and student athletes. It will be interesting to see the comparison between groups and if it really differs from among different groups on campus.

In my survey which will be a random sample of students I want to examine how comfortable students are with drinking and if they feel it is okay for underage kids to be drinking within DU community. I want to see how much the average student cares about underage drinking and how much they abide but the laws of the state and school.

I also plan to look at faculty and see how they view the underage group students who drink. What do they think of the high level of underage drinking in college, do they care if there students are breaking the law every weekend if they’re still getting their work done? Are they viewing it as a problem or a social norm.

Research Report

The topic for my research revolves around underage drinking on college campuses, which has had a plethora of research that has been done on the matter. The matter is so controversial because while most kids go to college around the age of 18 the legal drinking age across the country is 21… so this must entail that kids don’t drink in college because it’s illegal. However the lines are actually very blurred and underage drinking rates especially at college are extremely high thus leading to researching this particular aspect of American culture.

        First I got some background research on the legal drinking age in the country to have a better understanding of how we ended up where we are today. A lot of the momentum to lower the drinking age in America actually was as a result of the Vietnam War. Protests over the war lead to a lot of young americans pushing to lower the national voting age to 18 with the argument, “If a boy is old enough to fight for his country, why isn’t he old enough to vote?” This eventually led to the adaptation of the slogan that is commonly used today, “If you’re old enough to fight and die for your country, why can’t you order a drink?” (Main 35).  In the late 60’s and early 70’s this momentum to lower the drinking age picked up lots of support after the voting age was successfully lowered. Between 1970 and 1976 29 states lowered their drinking age below 21 however the results were horribly negative. Traffic deaths in young teens skyrocketed due to a massive increase in drunk driving amongst young adults. This lead almost instantly for calls to revoke the new lower drinking age and the leaders of the charge were a group still popular today M.A.D.D. (Mothers against drunk driving). This group was assembled by a mother of a young teenage Californian girl Cari Lightner who was struck by a drunk driver and killed on the way to a carnival (Main 35)  This grassroots movement was then started and instantly picked up local, state and eventually federal support and in 1984 Congress passed the Uniform Drinking Age Act which required all states to raise the age to 21 for any kind of alcohol consumption. While states can still technically lower their drinking age the federal government says they will withhold highway funding if any state decides to do so. This is a very aggressive clause from the federal government and many would argue slightly unconstitutional because it takes away the power of states rights which was one of the founding principles of our country.

        I think this background information has a very grandeur open look on the beginnings of our rather high drinking age. We are one of 12 countries in the world that have a drinking age of 21 or older in every other country in the world where drinking is legal it is below that. 60% of countries in the world the drinking age is either 18 or 19 and in 21% of countries it is even lower than that. So that means that an 18 year old, the average age of a first year college undergrad, can drink in 81% of countries in the world which is staggering (“Minimum Legal Drinking Age”, 2015). As someone who hates this law and has always pondered why it is so high. Not much of it is closely related to the topic but I feel it is solid to open with to help the reader get a better overview of the history of this law. Also possible to explore how the much stricter DUI laws today might make the main reason the age was raised again to be an irrelevant argument in 2015. Might be a good question to explore in interviews and the other primary research aspects of this paper.

Also in this article by Carla T. Main who mostly writes on law and society in America she talks explicitly about the drinking on college campuses and how she sees the high drinking age as a danger causing binge drinking and various other dangerous drinking habits (p.36-37). But it is relatively brief which is only weakness of this article for my application to my research. She is a scholarly writer and the article is peer reviewed, which makes it a very reliable article to extract information from.

The next article I found to be useful in my research on the topic is by a group of physiatrists. This article focuses mainly on high risk drinking behaviors college students partake in and better way to educate students and deal with the issue that so many of them confront because of drinking. The article sites many scholarly sources such as the Harvard School of Public Health to better break down the dangerous behaviors many college students are participating concerning drinking. Upon surveying students at Harvard two separate times, 4 years apart, they found that the same amount of students said they binge drink actually increased, 44% in 1993 and 53% in 1997. Why exactly is not know but it's only an indication of how underage drinking is only becoming easier for students. This information can be very vital in breaking down for the reader an overview of binge drinking amongst students even at colleges prestigious as Harvard. However downsides of this article is that the information is very objective and not really analyzed like in the first article by Carla T. Main. Nevertheless the medical perspective on the situation adds good depth to the secondary research presented in the paper.  

Perhaps one of the best articles I found for the topic is called “AN EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.” Written by grad students it takes a very explicit look at how underage drinking affects students specifically at private universities. My focus being DU a small private university makes the information and findings extremely relatable for my topic in writing. Downfalls of the article include that fact that it is very anti-drinking and seemingly wants to find ways to eliminate or drastically lower the amount of underage drinking on college campuses. Nevertheless it does conclude that students at these smaller private universities do better balancing drinking and school due to small classes, required attention, and teacher attention.

There are a few articles I found about how to discipline kids who have been caught underage drinking and how to prevent it from even happening in the first place. The prevention techniques I found to be a bit extreme, such as no one with a record of serving minors or caught drinking while they were minors should be allowed to buy kegs or kicking everyone not over 21 out of restaurant bars at 9pm. These methods I found to be very dated and look in a very backwards direction. Nevertheless it is good to have opposite ends of the spectrum to keep my findings diverse. However what I did find useful was the arguments behind how schools and authorities deal with underage drinking. This is extremely interesting to me because of how poorly I think the school handles underage drinking in the student body. Having been on the backend of them I find DU’s ways in particular very crude and unfair particularly their detox policy which is that any student campus that blows above the legal limit get sent to the city of Denver’s detox facility downtown. This is not only completely unnecessary it costs a lot of money for students and their families. Looking deeper into the dealing with students who have incidents could be essential in answering how acceptable the administrations feel underage drinking. Also good to look at it from a government point of view and break down how they deal with underage drinking and if it’s effective or rather a joke (personally I side on the joke side). Nevertheless it also poses great questions for the primary research aspect to get a gauge on how the community feels underage drinking is dealt with by the school and state.

I found many articles pertaining to the parental aspect of drinking and how education or lack thereof affects students when they eventually go off to college. Many studies showed parents who facilitated drinking to their underage kids made them less at risk for risky behavior when they were drinking on their own with friends. This is a critical part of the 21 drinking age debate because many kids parents have been serving them alcohol for sometime before they turn 21. Coming from an Italian family I was always offered red wine to compliment my dinner, a common cultural thing but illegal none the less. While the arguments and data are strong I feel they are not as applicable to what I am trying to answer in paper because I’m trying to focus on students while they are at college. No matter what student parent relationships will vary extremely no matter what school you attended so I feel the parental argument is a bit too insecure to use in the paper.  

I feel what’s most missing from my research right now is public opinion on underage drinking in colleges. How bad does the American public as well as universities view this matter since it is so prevalent the law seems basically irrelevant. So perhaps change my keyword within my searches to find different types of articles pertaining to opinion on underage drinking and the laws that make so many Americans who drink do it illegally. Possibly also finding some sort of connection between times of prohibition and the similarities it has with the drinking laws now.

Where I saw a lot of overlap in the research was the matter of binge drinking. Some articles used it to defend the law and as a reason to force underage drinking to stop due its dangerous nature. Others found it as a sign that the current system is broken and encourages these kinds of behaviors. Nevertheless I see it as good material for the primary research aspect and getting a gauge on the DU communities view on the matter.

Reference:

Dunnagan, T., Haynes, G., Linkenbach, J., & Shatwell, P. (2003). Developing theoretical and environmental policy for underage drinking. American Journal of Health Behavior, 27(5), 508-523. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/211878874?accountid=14608

Coll, J. E., Draves, P. R., & Major, M. E. (2008). AN EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS. College Student Journal, 42(4), 982-985. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/236588640?accountid=14608

Miller, N. S., M.D., Stout, A. W., B.A., & Sheppard, L. M., M.A. (2000). Underage drinking among college students. Psychiatric Annals, 30(9), 597-601. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/217045030?accountid=14608

Main, C. T. (2009). Underage drinking and the drinking age. Policy Review, (155), 33-46. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/216455758?accountid=14608

Lindsay, G. B., Merrill, R. M., Owens, A., & Barleen, N. A. (2008). Parenting manuals on underage drinking: Differences between alcohol industry and non-industry publications. American Journal of Health Education, 39(3), 130-137. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/212710239?accountid=14608

Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) in 190 Countries - Minimum Legal Drinking Age - ProCon.org. (2015, August 25). Retrieved November 3, 2015, from http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004294

Composition in a New Genre

Taking a piece of writing and composing it for a new genre is a critical skill for

any writer to have. The purpose is to shape the writing to better fit this new genre and

new audience that comes along with it. A good example of this would be Jon Krakauer

and his book “Into the Wild.” Krakauer was originally a journalist for Outside magazine,

wrote an article about a kid Chris McCandless who cut ties with his life and ran away to

live in the remote wilderness of Alaska. After writing this article he became fascinated

with the story and began collecting more and more information and eventually

transformed this article into a novel. Not just any novel I might add on of the best selling

of all time. So there lies the importance of composing in a new genre, you can take any

piece of your writing and transform it into a completely new genre and outlet. The

purpose of my endeavor will be to take the research project I have been working on all

quarter and make it usable for publication in the student newspaper the Clarion.

Next it’ll be key to make this attract to the same audience but yet still appealing to

the new discourse community I’m attempting to appeal to. The main change I will have

to make within the paper is change the focus more towards DU itself. The Clarion is a

very school focused paper and anything in the opinions section has to directly relate to

DU students and facility. The writing will also have to be shortened and more focused

because of the new genre that it is being placed in. No one wants to read a ten page

newspaper article, not even in the New York Times, so the points will have to become

more direct for the reader. At the same time though the content and message will have to

remain the same in the shortened version so it doesn’t lose it core purpose.

The new genre outfit for my research assignment will be the well-established

Clarion the official newspaper of DU. As a published writer of the newspaper I have a

very good sense of what will need to be transformed in the current piece. Conventions of

this new genre I’m entering will be quite a few things. This piece is will fall into the

opinions section of the paper which means I will need to add much more personal voice

in with the findings. With lines such as “The drinking age is a tired old law in the use and

needs to be lowered.” Establishing a strong voice in this section of the paper is the

success to really drawing in the reader who will either agree or make their own opinion

based on the views you express. Also the word count will have to be drastically reduced

to about 450-500 words opposed to the 3,000 plus it currently is. This part can be tricky

and particularly difficult because many important points and discoveries I’ve made will

have to be left out. I experienced this once already as I transformed a paper written in

WRIT 1122 about the death of the manual transmission into a Clarion article. The

sliming process was difficult mainly because you have to make every sentence count as

much as possible no words can be wasted space on the page. I think the Clarion is a

perfect outlet for my research project because the focus of it is drinking on college

campuses and all my primary research is done at DU. This means the article can really

resonate with the student and hopefully facility that read it because it is directly about the

culture of this campus. Also drinking on this campus and the troubles many students have

with the school is a critical issue across the school. Many feel Campus Police and Student

Life have unfairly treated them for drinking underage. A practice so common in America

as I’ve shown in my research that it feels very unjust that only a few are singled out. So

Hopefully this article can really attract the attention of the student body.

One piece I really wish to highlight from my research is the article, “AN

EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS”. This article took a look specifically at small private

universities like DU and studied how drinking effected its student population. It found

that at smaller schools like DU students did a much job of balancing drinking and school

then those students at larger schools like CU Boulder. This is great for my argument in

the article for letting students drink because most can handle the balance. The next article

I want to highlight from the research I’ve already done is “Underage drinking and the

drinking age” by C. T. Main. In this article she really breaks down the flaws of our

current system under the current drinking laws. She looks at how it is actually causing

more problems than good influencing binge drinking and getting good smart kids into

trouble with the law. It’s clearly a very broken system in her eyes and she cites people

like the Dean of Middlebury College in Vermont, John McCardell Jr., wrote a piece in

the New York Times highlighting the stupidity and backwards nature of our current

drinking laws.

One of the new sources I’d like to cite is Dean McCardell’s New York Times

article itself. He talks extensively about his experiences with college students and seeing

some get in trouble for no other reason than for the fact that they had drank a little that

night. He cites how backwards and outdated the current laws are with the rest of the

world and how more harm than good is actually coming of it. He also recognizes that no

matter what college students are going to drink no matter what laws you put in place so

you might as well make it legal for them.

The last thing I would like to cite in the article is information about our own

current Chancellor Rebecca Chopp. She actually signed petition along with 130 college

presidents in 2008 in support of lowering the drinking age. If our own Chancellor

supports this idea shouldn’t it be allowed? Great food for thought amongst the other

information in the article.

Reference:

Main, C. T. (2009). Underage drinking and the drinking age. Policy Review, (155), 33-46.

Retrieved from http://0-

search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/216455758?accountid=14608

Coll, J. E., Draves, P. R., & Major, M. E. (2008). AN EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING

IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS. College Student Journal, 42(4), 982-985.

Retrieved from http://0-

search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/236588640?accountid=14608

McCardell, J. M., Jr. (2012, June 23). Let Them Drink at 18, With a Learner’s Permit

[Editorial]. New York Times. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/28/do-we-need-to-redefine-adulthood/let-

them-drink-at-18-with-a-learners-permit

College Presidents Debate Drinking Age. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5612870

MAPS 3

Theory of Writing

Writing is the art in which you voice through words a message in which you then must prove.

The Map I have done represents the journey a writer must go through in order to create a piece powerful and persuasive, yet well rounded and interesting. I used a metaphor of the colonization of the United States starting in England then moving all the way through to westward expansion. Felt this is a good metaphor because it represents all the hurdles that a writer must cross in order to make their piece purposeful and respected like our country today (everyone’s got haters).

There is a lot of key terms overlapping the maps. They all seem to apply and mix with one another and are all critical to writing success. For instance prior knowledge I believe is the key to any aspect of writing because you will always use it no matter what. Critical incident is the motivator whether it's in the theory or the process of reflection. In order to be effective in writing you must always prove yourself and back your claims with research and this all comes together into one large theory and execution of good writing. Whether it be a lab report or a newspaper article they all follow the same guidelines.

Being a visual learner using the maps exercises really helped me see the aspects and processes of writing. It was easier to see how to break up all the elements and key terms that go into writing. It was also extremely helpful to gain a better grasp and understanding of the various key terms we have learned throughout the quarter. When you can apply them to make sense of various aspects of writing from reflection to theory it gives you a better overall understanding of the art that is writing.  

MAPS 2

This map was strictly focused around the creation of a research writing assignment like the final one we are completing for class. While the first map was much more open ended interpretation of the key terms and how to apply them to our writing this is much more focused map. It’s built strictly around how to use the key terms to create a successful research paper. There’s definitely overlap between the two like it is important to instantly identify the rhetorical situation and once that is established you can build the rest of the piece based on nature of rhetorical situation.

        I think my map uses a really nice metaphor of building a car for connecting the key terms for the purpose of a research assignment. Starting with the “design team” is the idea of establishing a question. What purpose is this piece trying to serve and what needs to be researched to come to a conclusion or answer. It’s a good blend of prior knowledge of writing research papers with the current knowledge of key terms like genre and audience we learned in this class.

        These maps supply a great visual reference tool for all the key terms and writing processes we are currently learning in class. To be able to connect everything with visual connotation is great for our final piece on the theory of writing. Seeing all these terms blended answering different questions will lead very nicely into creating our very own theory of writing.

MAPS 1

Prior knowledge is still extremely present in the current stage of this class. Every class you walk into day one you come in with expectations, prior experiences and an attitude. The knowledge you bring into the class shapes how you approach assignments and how you go about learning new knowledge.

My maps walks you visually through connecting what knowledge I brough coming into this class and how I am navigating writing and researching with the key terms I’ve been taught. I thought the images I used to display the key terms were very representational of their definitions and applications. My map really breaks down building a piece of writing from the start to finish and how to get what I want out of any piece I’m pursuing.  

I see writing as a collection of ideas organized together through various key terms. When building a piece in order for it to hold the most validity you must take a step by step process realizing all the key pieces such as voice and genre. In order to make a piece have strong value u must simply follow these steps and deeply think about each one. Once you have walked through the map of terms and you have stopped and thought long enough at each one you can create a professional piece of writing.

Voice

Voice Poster

       

In my humble opinion voice is the most important aspect of any piece of writing. Sure this does not apply as much to scientific writing where it is solely to display facts through a very clear lens is the goal but it is crucial in many forms of opinionated writing. Voice is so crucial in any writing practice because it is what separates you from the field of other writers. What unique characteristics or ideals do you bring to the table that make you look a something or someone in the way you do.   

        As some who lives, breaths and eats cars I’m going to use an automotive journalism example to further my point about voice in writing. In the automotive journalist world the same set of cars will be reviewed by various publishes but in the end after reading all them they can sound repetitive and dull. For instance when the new Corvette (C7) Stingray came out I must have read an upwards of 10 plus articles on it. All with the same basic tone and conclusion about the car. However there in one person in this industry who no matter what will tell it different from the rest of the lot that man is Jeremy Clarkson. For instance back when Ferrari launched its all-new 458 Italia, their flagship mid-engined supercar, journalist from all publishing companies had only great things to say about it. They said it was fast, fun, sharp and things of that nature. But when Jeremy had his go in it he was more than thrilled by it. He exclaimed, “This car is so good I wouldn’t care if the seats had spikes and it ate one of my legs!” He brought an entire new vision and emotion to reports on this car and how it was making all the journalist feel. He was somehow the most enthralling to see and really gave the reader a proper feel of what it was like to drive this amazing piece of machine. This is the power of voice in writing.

        To quote the CCC reading, “creating a written voice through which to communicate with others is a useful way to think of writing.” Its not only creating your own voice but its making it your own that will lead to your success as a writer no matter the rhetorical situation. While developing your writing you should also be developing your voice as it changes through your various real world experiences. You writing should be a lens looking inside you.