Haunani Greenbrier     Drinks All Around If misrepresenting oneself in order to engage in underage drinking is lying, a large group of the U.Va. population is dishonorable. And U.Va. honor works under the assumption that the dishonorable cannot rise above their deviant state. So instead of risking contamination of the rest of our community, we eliminate these dishonorable folk. We do not give them alternatives to lying, stealing, or cheating. We kick them out. Yet when we of the university confront the problem of underage drinking we do something which at first glance seems surprising. Instead of the bare-bones law and order that one would expect from a conservative school like U.Va., the powers-that-be create preventive measures such as the Sunset Concert Series and moving formal fraternity/sorority rush to spring. This is somewhat wanton of U.Va. in the sense that this school's dominant ideology does not usually encompass such ideas as spending money on midnight basketball games to get kids off the streets, as opposed to letting the police get the kids off the streets. Yet it only appears surprising. Maybe underage drinking is not a problem, or, more specifically, a problem worthy of fixing. In the end, problems that go unsolved are unsolved due to either the inefficiency of the problem solver or to the final understanding that the situation is not really a problem. First let's look at the inefficiency of the problem solver. Clearly, any administration that decides it wants a billion dollars and can get seventy-five percent of the way towards its goal in just a few years should have no problem when it comes to stopping a bunch of kids from drinking. Or is it more profitable to be ineffectual at solving this problem. This way one could look concerned about the "proper" things without taking up any of the slack for making people actually do "proper" things. The solution, it seems, would be to enforce the law in such a way that it would have an impact on those who break it. It is interesting to note that when U.Va. refers to its drinking problems it cites the drinking at fraternity parties. When one says this one is almost always referring to the "white" fraternities and not the "black" fraternities, inc. Why is underage drinking apparently a white college student's problem? Is there some biological reasoning, or is it simply that having an active police force at black parties tends to deter drinking? It would seem the answer to the drinking problem has already been implemented but only to one part of the university's social strata. Let us assume that this is due to U.Va.'s love of its black students and not a way to avoid any trouble that arises when the children of certain prominent lawyers, doctors, and other assorted wealthy benefactors are either pepper-sprayed in the breaking up of fraternity brawls or in any way receive punishment for their underage drinking. This serves as a fabulous segue into why it is effective to look busy while doing nothing when tackling the U.Va. drinking "problem." What would be the downside of eliminating underage drinking at U.Va.? Let us not be unproductive and consider saying something like, "Then, the undergrads would be sober when contemplating what they're getting for their $10,000 a year," but think about this sincerely. There would be at least one alumnus out there who would resent the idea of his alma mater losing something he cherished when he went here. The sanctity of the fraternity keg and being blitzed through most of one's undergraduate career do resonate strongly with some people's sentiments. Also, when we imagine a college without underage drinking, the word "college" becomes a foreign term. When talking of the good ol' college days, yes one may talk about that cool econ professor or that riveting ENWR discussion, but other topics that will arise are the stories of funneling, tailgating, and how I met your mother by the keg. Alcohol is an integral part of American collegiate life. Any threat to that tradition, especially at U.Va., a school that prides itself in its traditions, could have effects that are beyond this author's imagination. So maybe it is a worthy solution to blame organizations where drinking occurs, or to move rush back, or in fact to implement any other ineffectual band-aid-type solution to our problem. Or we could let go of our hypocrisy. Another solution is to change laws, as opposed to allowing the breaking of them without punishment, in the understanding that blatant disregard of a law without any serious attempts to change it and make it more just is to destroy the very roots of our legal system. But then we would have to sacrifice some of our supposed piety, apathy, and pretense in realizing we are a school that likes to be drunk. The third solution and I think the solution that would most go along with what U.Va. really holds as its ideals and the willingness U.Va. has to create active change is to shut the hell up.

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