While listening to N.P.R. this morning I heard a report about drinking at U.Va. It sounds like things have changed.
When I went to U.Va. in the late 70s, drinking at parties and frat houses was common. I think that at that time, 3.2 percent beer was legal at 18. I can still remember the smell of stale beer and the littering of scores of empty beer cups around the grounds of a frat house the morning after a big bash. Beer was an integral part of every frat party, toga or otherwise. Predictably, sometimes accidents resulted from the unbridled drinking. Was it really a good idea for a 19-year-old to run a street motorcycle up the stairways of a frat house? Probably not.
As part of the Commerce School, I once went to a party, held in a University building, that included a cleaned plastic garbage can that was filled with punch and grain alcohol. It turned into an orgy of drunken 20-year-olds and gave me my one and only blackout experience.
On the other hand, low-grade marijuana, while readily available for $30-35/ounce, was considered a much more serious offense in the late 70s. As I recall, it just made me confused, laugh, and eat excessively.
After working as a public defender attorney for 23 years, I can tell you that alcohol plays a huge role in domestic dispute cases as well as other acts of violence and stupidity. Marijuana, the substance demonized at UVA in the 70s, is rarely involved as a cause or accelerant for bad behavior in criminal cases.
Maybe now there is some reasonable balance at Virginia. Maybe now Virginia neither condones (or encourages) excessive alcohol abuse, nor overreacts to the simple use or possession of a weed.
Tom Williamson
COMM ‘80
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