With police cracking down on underage drinking on our campus lately, a lot of people have stood in strong opposition to the STOP program, or Stop Teenage Opportunity to Purchase.
I will start right away by saying this isn’t a perfect program and there are a lot of problems with it. I have heard from many students about the horrible conditions students experience in jail after getting caught, and that obviously has to stop. As horrible as underage drinking might be, it is unacceptable to put naive young people in the same room as dangerous, hardened criminals.
The program isn’t without its merits, though. To understand the pros, you have to let go of irrational prejudice against police. Let’s just walk in their shoes for a bit and see this from their point of view.
A lot of dangerous activity happens off-campus, but a significant number of it occurs when the perpetrator is heavily intoxicated. Those drunk activities can lead to a lot of crimes.
Just a few years back, Ohio State was notorious for rioting after football games. On top of all that, non-students that live off-campus have continually complained to police about loud music, fights and other dangers that sometimes seem directly associated with drinking.
Keep that in perspective and have an open mind.
Many allege that OSU is the only college being targeted in this program. Not only is that argument true, it also makes perfect sense. What other university in Franklin County has 50,000 students, a very popular sports program and a propensity for rioting and other destructive or violent festivities?
Yeah, I can’t think of one either.
Not only is OSU a hotbed for such activity, it also attracts students from other campuses who come to partake in our activities on our campus.
When the police targets us, it’s not repressive or oppressive. It just makes sense. The problem that bothers a lot of people is that sometimes our laws don’t make complete sense. Eighteen-year-old people are legally considered adults, a privilege that comes with amazing freedoms like signing up for our army and voting. It would seem that after all that, there’s really no excuse to bar them from sipping on an alcoholic beverage.
That being said, it’s equally ludicrous to fight this seemingly unjust law by drinking. That action makes no sense whatsoever. If you really want to stop this law, pursue that opportunity through normal means.
No one changes the law by breaking it. Write your representative, organize, vote, protest; do things that can actually effect a change.
Until the law changes, breaking it isn’t an act of protest — it’s a crime. When you take part in underage drinking, you know the associated risks and accept them. If you get caught, that’s solely your fault. It’s not only reprehensible but downright annoying to see students use the law as a scapegoat once they’re caught.
The law is the law, and it has been on the books for years. When you only care about changing the law the few times you are caught, you’re not really an advocate for a better system; you’re just someone who got caught doing something they knew was wrong trying to find an excuse for your actions.
