More Of The War On Alcohol

To follow up on last week's post about the war on college drinking here in Connecticut, an article from the Hartford Courant telling the story of University of Hartford President Walter Harrison's own problems with drinking while in college. According to Harrison,

"I think I had the same struggles that all college students have. My father had died two weeks before I went to college. Kids drink and get depressed and get suicidal. I don't think I was that way normally, but I think having had a lot to drink, I was."

Not to play the role of the pop psychologist, but my guess would be that Mr. Harrison was depressed because his father died, not because he drank alcohol. The lonely libertarian doesn't think all, or even most college students are depressed. And those that are depressed, are not depressed because they drink alcohol. This is not to brush aside the fact that many people in college may be dealing with near crippling stress and emotional trauma. If anything, these are the sorts of issues in student's private lives administrators should be involved in.

What's amazing is that even the most intelligent among us still resort to the tactics of blaming alcohol for personal problems. Alcohol abuse is a symptom, not a disease. Maybe if college administrators realized that, they could start asking real questions about what drinking on college campuses actually means.

(And what does the lonely libertarian think? If we, as society, taught responsible use, rather than demonized alcohol, maybe it wouldn't be such a controversial issue in the first place.)