The process of going through the research procedure, changing topics, making the topics more specific, finding new sources to the specific new topic, and repeating this process several times was a lot of work. Going through this allowed me to learn a lot of new information on not only my main topic but on several different topics related as well. I began my research on the question: why do college students binge drink?Realizing this topic is not only self explanatory but also broad, I narrowed my research question down a little bit. I changed my research question to, “why does college binge drinking cause such a problem to students and the university?” I then realized that my new question was also pretty self explanatory and broad. I went through this process of narrowing down several times until I found my final research question, “What are universities doing to help drinking problems?” This question was specific enough to focus on hard facts about the topic and minimized the obviousness of my previous questions.

After creating my new research question, I began to find new sources. My six original sources to my first question were now useless so I found four new sources that were more relevant to my new topic. The original sources were more factual and statistical about the amount of alcohol consumed, amount of college students who drink, and information about drinking in general. Most of that information you could’ve guessed, for example most college students drink on the weekends. When I started the process of finding new sources related to my topic, I knew I had to be more conscious about being focused. I found articles and sources that spoke about specific policies and ways universities took action against drinking and how some colleges neglected to address the situation at hand.

Now that I have learned so much about college drinking in general I can see why it is such a problem. I learned about issues that happened at colleges like what happened at Washington college where hundreds of students had a party and the cops went to break it up and riots started. Bottles were thrown, people where arrested, a riot tank was called. A second one I learned about was at Keene state. Pumpkin fest is a huge party at Keene and it got out of hand. Riots, arrests, destruction and violence where huge factors. 170 people were disciplined by the school and there were many more that should’ve been but weren’t. Another incident was when a student at BC was found dead in the reservoir near campus. He was missing for a while and turned out to have drowned due to alcohol. These very real incidents happen more often than one would think, this opened my eyes to how much of a problem drinking is for universities.

I do not think universities do enough to prevent problems that arise with college drinking. Of course colleges cannot stop all drinking and contain every problem but they can do a much better job than they are now. A lot of colleges are notorious for being ‘party schools’, even Umass is known for being ‘Zoomass’. Colleges could take a lot more action to prevent issues that arise with drinking. After much research, I found there are a lot more serious issues than I thought, some include, “assault: More than 690,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. Sexual Abuse: More than 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. Death: 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from unintentional alcohol-related injuries.” (ncadd) Some schools recognize these issues and some have been trying to prevent them. Some schools do not allow people under 21 to ride busses past 10 pm on the weekends because they are known to be ways to get around campus and bars while drinking. Some schools are trying to ban grain alcohol in their town so they can drink safer. Some schools have got university policies allowing them to go off campus so they can monitor off campus housing as well as on campus. Although a lot of schools are starting to take baby steps to control the issue of alcohol drinking on college campuses, many are not.

A lot of schools turn a blind eye to college drinking, so do parents and adults. A lot of parents and colleges say “its college, we did that once too” but the issue has always been there and never been solved. Some universities just have officers break up parties and send people on their way, then leave. Since the only thing that happens is the party gets shut down, people continue to go to parties, and continue to have parties. People do not even get a slap on the wrist for the most part. Campus police and securities mostly are not trained in how to deal properly with issues that arise with alcohol, which are most of the issues they see on a college campus.

After all this research on several different topics involving drinking on college  campus’s and how the universities handle college drinking, I do not think enough is being done at all. There are a lot of issues every weekend on every campus that involve drinking and most will go without proper help and support and will be dealt with incorrectly. Instead of getting help most the time it is a slap on the wrist and that’s it. There is a lot that could be done to address the issue of college drinking, and although some universities are attempting to remedy the situation, many are struggling to make a difference.