College keggers are the topic of the day. Well, it’s really been a hot media topic for a few months now. There was Caitlyn Flanagan’s Atlantic article about frat culture. Paying for the Party, the sociology book by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, describes how lower-income girls fare at a party college. (We discussed the book here. Ross Douthat here.) Now, there’s a big debate about whether colleges should take responsibility for the outcomes of the party and how we calibrate the number of sexual assaults on campus.

When I started at college, the drinking age was 18. They later raised the age to 21, so I drank illegally my freshman year, legally my sophomore year, and then illegally for the rest of college. And I drank a lot. In my freshman year, the drinking rules were really lax. Someone would buy several kegs that were tapped right on the dorm hallway. My Tretorn sneakers (ah, the preppy 80s) were soaked with the river of spilled beer every Friday night. And I attended a notoriously nerdy college.

Amazingly, nothing really terrible happened to me, despite a huge maturity gap. (I’m still not a huge fan of rum, after one night of extreme yakking in 1985.) But there are plenty of bad things that happen to kids when they black out after twelve shots of tequila.

Douthat and Flanagan both argue that colleges promote a party culture, which boosts admission rates and brings in $$$. But then turn a blind eye to the fallout to party scene and evade legal responsibility.  What? There’s drinking going on at those fraternity houses? What? I had no idea!  

Some think that college rankings should include statistics on sexual assaults. Many of those assaults are fueled by booze.

Douthat, Flanagan, and a number of liberals are surprisingly in agreement on this topic. Bad things happen when kids are super, super drunk. Even if the sexual assault numbers are not totally accurate, we all know that bad things happen when an 18-year old has twelve tequila shots.

Those same writers say that colleges have insulated themselves legally from the outcomes of the party scene, and unofficially, promote it. That’s how colleges with unimpressive academic records attract new students.

Me? I’m not sure where I stand on this. My biggest problem, I suppose, is the existence of these stupid party schools that really steal people’s money. I drank on the weekends in college, but I spent the rest of the week in the library. I came out of college smarter than when I started. There are a disturbing number of colleges that are more party than class work. The most vulnerable are the lower income students who end up with a hangover and a huge student loan bill.