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 Are the laws outdated and causing more harm than good?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.