On a Facebook group that celebrates young women getting drunk, there’s no such thing as going too far.
Students post their drunk pictures; parents are worried
NEW YORK: On a Facebook group that celebrates young women getting drunk, there’s no such thing as going too far. One young woman dances on top of a bar. Another sits on the toilet drinking a beer. Several vomit. One appears with a bruised and bandaged face (“I just got drunk and fell out of a car,” she writes.). In another photo, two women urinate into a waterfall.
What you won’t find on this page — called “Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night” — is humiliation and embarrassment. For the most part, the women post the photos themselves, seemingly with pride.
This makes many adults — teachers, counsellors, parents — worry that students aren’t thinking through the consequences of showing themselves drunk to the world.
Many photos on the site are accompanied by full names and the colleges the women attend, apparently without much concern that parents, or potential employers, will take a look.
“You can’t overstate how unthinking these kids are at 18, 19, 20 years old,” said Robert L Carothers, president of the University of Rhode Island, “They’re not a thoughtful bunch, by and large.”
But a moderator of the group, who asked that her name not be used, said not to take it too seriously. “It’s just something fun to do,” she said. “You need to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes.”
Carothers said that at URI, advisers tell students not to post photos of themselves drunk, reminding them these pictures can be accessed for years to come.
Often, he says, students don’t listen. “I’ve told them, ‘Look, these pictures are evidence you’re doing something illegal,’ and they say ‘Oh, I never thought about that.’ Sometimes they say, ‘That’s who I am,’ “ Carothers said.
40% of college students binge drink, according to a report this year by the Centre on Alcohol and Substance Abuse. The report lists many ramifications of college binge drinking, including injuries, sexual violence and vandalism.
In addition, college students who reported having considered suicide were more likely to be active binge drinkers.
The Facebook group doesn’t talk much about these problems. It has more than 1,72,000 members, and nearly 5,000 photos.
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