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by fencepost 1178 days ago
I'm going to guess that you're in your 30s or younger (looked, yep). Part of what you're seeing in the comments is a reflection of age ranges on HN and of pretty massive change over the last 30-35 years around alcohol on campuses.

As relevant history, it's less than 40 years since the October 1986 deadline for states to raise their alcohol purchase and possession ages to 21, and until sometime in the '90s a lot of schools were still pretty permissive about underage drinking on campus as long as it wasn't in the face of 'townies' and police. For a lot of HN readers who graduated in the 90s (or earlier) the kind of party and alcohol restrictions that are now commonplace are something they first encountered when their kids went to college.
3 comments
CraigRo 1177 days ago
My recollection was that in NY, you could have,drink,and buy alcohol as a minor. You just couldn't SELL it to a minor, and, at least in my nbhd, that wasn't really enforced. I saw a couple guys drinking a six-pack at an AP exam in the morning in full view of a proctor. Colleges didn't seem to care much as long as you drank relatively low alcohol beer. What got scary was when I visited a more hard-drinking and yet repressive college where I saw 17 year olds with enough liquor under their beds to kill an elephant. I happen to think that we lost something when adults couldn't drink with college students -- underage drinking without adults easily goes overboard.
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woodruffw 1178 days ago
Sure: I readily accept that this is a generational thing. But it's being presented as a culture war shift, when plenty of people in the comments here have observed that Stanford's policy has not meaningfully changed in the last 20 years.

I think banning alcohol on campus is foolish, and leads to worse overall outcomes. I also think this article's framing is dishonest and intentionally tendentious.

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aidenn0 1177 days ago
The University I went to was a dry (or nearly dry, maybe wine for welcoming VIP speakers) campus for a long time, but the degree to which it was enforced varied. It was also largely moot since there were 3 bars a single block away from the student union and the majority of students lived off campus.
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