Underage Drinking Project

No, I actually haven't.

Yes, you have. From your first post:

Comments and suggestions needed. Thanks.

You've gotten plenty of comments. You can't put yourself out there and complain when you don't get a 100% positive response back.
 
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Yes, you have. From your first post:

No. I asked for comments and suggestions. Although I have received negative comments, I have not received "advice and suggestions" as scoutpilot said.
 
No. I asked for comments and suggestions. Although I have received negative comments, I have not received "advice and suggestions" as scoutpilot said.

You've gotten responses from scoutpilot and bruno, who are definitely BTDT, and a bunch of other posters who have equal or greater experience than you. By getting down in the weeds with semantics--advice vs. comments--you really just look butthurt that you didn't get the response you want.
 
No. I asked for comments and suggestions. Although I have received negative comments, I have not received "advice and suggestions" as scoutpilot said.

Bruno offered interesting advice. So did several of your compatriots. The fact that you dislike the advice doesn't change the fact that is advice.
 
You've gotten responses from scoutpilot and bruno, who are definitely BTDT, and a bunch of other posters who have equal or greater experience than you. By getting down in the weeds with semantics--advice vs. comments--you really just look butthurt that you didn't get the response you want.

Negative. And it's not semantics. Only raimius and buffalo have been constructive.
 
I will say that MANY honor and conduct offenses have involved alcohol in my cadet career (not MY offenses, I didn't drink underage). I can also say the VAST majority of the investigations I did on my ship were for junior members who had too much to drink and got in trouble (in fact, all but two of the investigations I did involved alcohol). Most were not underage.

A large number of sexual assaults also involve someone having too much to drink.

I won't debate the age. It's 21. Don't like it as a cadet or midshipman, you can drink underage, and if you're caught, you've got a strike. Happens again, even if you're of age but did something stupid, and you're probably going to see the door.

I don't get the "I did it, and I never lied so it must be OK argument." That doesn't compute. I did a FEW things as a cadet that would have gotten me kicked out. I wasn't caught, but once I started to really think about it, I changed my ways. These aren't honor offenses I'm talking about, just stupid decisions I made that I rethought as I got older. Because I didn't get caught doesn't make what I did "ok" or "acceptable"....just meant I was lucky.

I don't like the position alcohol put my friends in, especially female friends (you are a little protective of your shipmates).

I'm more likely talking about "Responsible Drinking" v. "Underage Drinking", but when kids who can't drink in public, they tend to "cram" all of that drinking in the short period of time they have.

Maybe USAFA isn't doing a good job. I honestly have no idea what academies are saying about underage drinking these days. I know when I was a cadet, especially with the new Commandant of Cadets, the concept of underage drinking was beat into us each semester. Corps-wide "ops spotlights" on drinking, not just underage but responsible drinking. It didn't stop underage drinking, but I don't think these was any question that it was not only illegal, but would likely get you the boot. Not many people wanted to push that limit to have a philosophical debate on "can we send someone to die but not drink."

And to Bruno.... something tells me the AIR FORCE isn't going to debate "sending a soldier".... perhaps sending an "airman" though. Remember.... not everyone in the military is a soldier.
 
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I won't debate the age. It's 21. Don't like it as a cadet or midshipman, you can drink underage, and if you're caught, you've got a strike. Happens again, even if you're of age but did something stupid, and you're probably going to see the door.

Now it only takes one at USAFA, even w/o honor.

I don't get the "I did it, and I never lied so it must be OK argument." That doesn't compute.

This is the prevailing attitude at USAFA. :frown:
 
Out of curiosity, is USAFA doing the "Combine 2 of these factors and get the boot" or is it just, "1 strike and you are out" now?
 
Out of curiosity, is USAFA doing the "Combine 2 of these factors and get the boot" or is it just, "1 strike and you are out" now?

There were a lot of incidents this last semester, so it changed to just one.
 
Roman, I think your initiative is commendable, but I also think you are making a huge, incorrect assumption that breaking the law automatically amounts to an honor violation. As far as I know, it does not.

In the law, there are generally two types of crimes: (1) those involving "moral turpitude", and (2) those which are not. Here's a wiki page which separates the two and gives examples for you to digest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude

Practicing lawyers, for example, can be disbarred for committing a crime of "moral turpitude", but typically not for committing the latter. Granted, the cadet Honor Code is different than the real-world criminal law. But taking your example to another extreme, I do not believe that a cadet would be tossed out for, say, being convicted of exceeding the posted speed limit on the highway, even if the cadet knew that he was exceeding the posted limit at the time. Also, I think the "1-strike" rule is more of a demand that cadets to follow the rules, as opposed to automatically equating a "1-strike" violation to the level of an honor violation. Maybe I'm wrong.

Putting that all aside, I think you are to be commended for taking initiative here. Just know that the resistance you see here on SAF will likely be "small potatoes" from what resistance you can expect from your peers. If the risk of being disenrolled from USAFA is not a sufficient motivator for cadets to refrain from drinking underage, I am reluctant to see how your mission will have any greater effect. That doesn't mean you should give up the fight, but just know that there will likely be a cost to it.
 
I also think you are making a huge, incorrect assumption that breaking the law automatically amounts to an honor violation. As far as I know, it does not

I made no such assumption, and you are right that breaking the law is not automatically an honor violation. You can get kicked out for situations where you were honorable.
 
Out of curiosity, is USAFA doing the "Combine 2 of these factors and get the boot" or is it just, "1 strike and you are out" now?

A freshman in my squadron got an alcohol hit just a couple months ago and is still around, so I say it still depends on the situation.
 
A freshman in my squadron got an alcohol hit just a couple months ago and is still around, so I say it still depends on the situation.

The rules changed sometime in the middle of the semester. I remember one of my friends would have gotten kicked out if it happened a week later. I'm sure you're right though that it's still very dependent on the situation.
 
I’m of the opinion that the continual willingness to break the law is worse than a little white lie.

Roman, excuse me for making an incorrect assumption. The language above had me confused on your message.
 
Romad,

I concur with patentesq's view that your initiative is commendable. Commendable, and extremely niave. And THAT is the reason you are getting the impression that your leadership is not on-board with your idea, or indifferent towards making a change for the better. They KNOW that the problem is not as black and white as you seem to think it is. You're dealing with human nature here, and all the flaws and faults that are involved in leading humans and not robots.

Here is my advice (simply stated): your goal of stopping ALL underage drinking at the Academy will NEVER succeed, and going in front of your peers with a program that they know can never achieve that goal will be met with at best indifference, at worse ridicule. A much better goal would be to continue to get your fellow cadets aware of the consequences, set up a program that helps cadets "look out for each other" when one of them makes a stupid mistake like over-indulging (and the consequences that usually occur due to that), and setting a REALISTIC goal of reducing underage drinking incidents in the Academy to a realistic number ( less than 5 a year?) or by a certain percentage.

You are working towards becoming a leader. A leader knows that sometimes people are just plain dumb, and make some very dumb decisions. Also, as has been pointed out before, if forced to stay away from something like this, they will take it "out-of-sight" behind closed doors to avoid getting caught. YOUR challenge is to find a way to get people to THINK and to get them to UNDERSTAND it may not be worth it. Simply expecting people to be smart and legal on something like this just because you ordered it? Like I said, niave at best.

Like I said, good intentions, but unrealistic.
 
Roman, here's my advice. Take Bulllet's advice and follow it to the letter.

As usual, Bullet was much more direct than I was when I mentioned that there would be a "cost" to your plan. I do recognize, though, that part of the process of learning is rejecting advice and experiencing things for yourself. So whether you accept Bullet's sound advice or not, things will eventually turn out okay for you either way.

P.S. Be careful driving and be sure to observe the posted speed limit. :thumb:
 
I am of the firm opinion that not only is this law wrong and offensive to what are legally adults (and especially so to Service Members), but it is the cause of far more binge drinking, drunk driving and general stupidity involving alcohol and young adults than is seen in the parts of the world that do not treat the consumption of alcohol as such a huge event.

+100 :beer1:

Dr. David J. Hanson is a sociologist at the State University of New York at Potsdam who has studied alcohol and drinking for more than 40 years.

Right now we basically have alcohol prohibition for adults ages 18 to 20, and we are getting some of the same results we got through national prohibition in the early 20th century. Fewer young adults drink, but when they do drink they tend to drink more, and I'm mostly concerned about drinking to excess.

When you prohibit drinking legally, it pushes it into places that are uncontrolled, like fraternity houses. These are places that promote drinking games and excessive, rapid consumption of alcohol, which puts people in danger of getting alcohol poisoning, and that can be fatal.

Research suggests that the reduction in teenage alcohol-related fatalities that some point to as a reason for keeping the drinking age at 21 is in fact a result of nothing more than those fatalities being shifted to an older age group — people ages 21, 22 or 23.

Some also argue that the drinking age should be kept at 21 because the brain doesn't finish maturing until around age 25, but in that case we should also raise the voting age and the military age. We have to be consistent.

What we have been doing to prevent underage drinking so far hasn't worked. The DARE [Drug Abuse Resistance Education] program, for instance, which is used in about 70% of the schools in the country, is basically a scare tactic. There has not been a single scientific study of the effects of DARE that has found it to be productive. There have even been some studies that have found that the students who were exposed to DARE ended up using more frequently or more heavily.
 
I'm showing my complete incompetence for failing to "keep up with the times" here, because I TOTALLY missed the announcement where members of the military are now able to decide which rules they want to follow and which ones they do not.
 
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