Beyond bar tours, turning 21 isn't all fun and festivity

Last week, I got a cheery note from the Department of University Safety: "Dear TESS: In a few days you will celebrate your 21st birthday. From all of us at University Police Services -- Happy Birthday!"

So much for my tentative plans for a bar tour; with my alcohol tolerance and my luck, I'd get poisoned after two drinks.

Then I read a sentence that sounds eerily prophetic in light of the death last weekend: "Each year, over two dozen Penn State students die in alcohol-related traffic crashes, drownings, falls from balconies and similar 'accidents.' "

Okay, so after that little note I didn't feel very festive. Muttering, "Well happy birthday to you, too," I tossed it onto the pile of papers that festers in the corner of my room.

But I've been thinking about what it means to turn 21 in a college town where that magic age is the line of demarcation between people who can stand in line to go into those dark smoky places, and those who can't.

Last year, in an astounding flash of insight, the administration declared that drinking was a problem at Penn State. (How did they figure it out? Did they sneak into parties and watch people get sloshed? Or did they happen to be walking along Beaver Avenue one Friday night only to get beer dumped from above onto their expensive suits?)

Anyone who skims the police logs knows how much of a problem drunken driving is. Thanks to MADD and SADD, we all know that impairment begins with the first drink, but a lot of people still aren't designating a driver. It's one thing if you want to drink yourself to death, but putting the other people on the road at risk is unfair.

People who drink extensively in college (and, according to a 1994 study by the Harvard School of Public Health, 47 percent of Penn State students admitted to having been drunk at least three times in the past month) are forming habits that will be hard to break.

No one talks about alcoholism on college campuses; none of us ever thinks we could possibly have a problem. (We're invincible, right?)

Another very real problem is the link between drinking and sexual assault. As a counselor at the Women's Resource Center, I've worked with women who have been date-raped.

Often, the victim or the assailant -- or both -- have been drinking. Alcohol blurs people's perceptions and impairs clear communication. If a guy says his date consented to sex, and she can't remember what happened, is it rape?

William Asbury, vice president for student affairs, says in the latest issue of The Penn Stater, "Eighty percent of the disciplinary cases [at Penn State] involve alcohol." That statistic shouldn't surprise anyone who has walked down College Avenue at 3 a.m. on a Saturday.

I think everyone at Dear Old State realizes how difficult it is to enforce the drinking age on a college campus. Even though I can't buy alcohol (not for a few more days, at least) I have plenty of friends who can. I'll admit that I have, on occasion (twice), given friends money to buy me something to drink. As long as my friends and I drank it in a dorm room without making too much noise, we were perfectly safe.

A massive educational campaign at Freshman Testing, Counseling and Advising Program encouraging incoming first-year students to get high on life probably won't help. (Quick -- name one thing you learned at FTCAP. Thought you couldn't.)

Total prohibition of alcohol won't work either-- as a country, we've been there, done that.

The late-night HUB activities are a good idea in theory. Last year, I thought about writing a column about things to do on a Friday night that didn't involve alcohol. The problem: I couldn't think of any. (Except for the obvious things -- dinner, movies, etc. -- that people are perfectly capable of thinking of without my help.)

Some of the HUB activities actually look mildly interesting. But is a free showing of "Sleepless in Seattle" really going to keep people sober and off the streets? Will a ska-fest (whatever that is) solve the problem of drinking at Penn State?

These aren't very festive thoughts to be having as I contemplate which bars I want to go into on my twenty-first birthday, but they're issues we should all think about.

We're not invincible. There are limits to how much we can drink safely.

Personally, I'm looking forward to toasting many more birthdays.