When Choosing A College…

While the Princeton Review rankings are unlikely accurate, parents and concerned students can enhance safety from abuse and from the negative behaviors of other abusing students by enrolling in schools with sound alcohol policies, and alcohol free residential areas. College is an exciting, stressful and experimental period, and the corresponding risks of abuse and dependence during these years are tragically high. Choosing a lower risk facility may be a wise choice for students worried about social environments conducive to destructive substance use and abuse.

The University of Georgia should be commended for its efforts to limit the destruction of substance abuse within its campuses, and the University of Colorado at Boulder deserves ridicule for its transparent press release reaction to a persistent problem. With too many deaths, and tens of thousands of addictions developing each year at party colleges across the country, fundamental and institutional change is required to increase the safety of a transitional four year period into adulthood.