'Binge' educates higher education

Author: Joyce Man

Last year, Harvard University junior Anthony Fonseca was found dead after apparently killing himself in the University's Winthrop House. His was the second suicide there in 14 months. In the fall of 2003, 33 people were arrested in an elaborate drug bust at the University of Virginia. And in 2002, the National Institute of Justice revealed that 3 percent of women in colleges across the nation have been raped, but that only 5 percent of these ever reveal their stories. These are some of the lurid details dotting campus life in elite institutions that Barrett Seaman scrutinizes in "Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You."

At first glance, the book looks like the latest installment in a growing trend of exposés on the dramatic and oftentimes tragic,social dynamics of campus culture. Like Tom Wolfe's fictional glance at Dupont University's student experience in "I Am Charlotte Simmons" and Alexandra Robbins' current bestseller "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities," Seaman's book contains shocking accounts of the alcohol and drug-infused lives of the average American kid in higher education.

Seaman, a former reporter at Time magazine and currently a trustee at Hamilton College, compiled two years' worth of investigation at 12 elite institutions, including Harvard, Dartmouth, the University of Virginia and even Middlebury College. Choosing not to go undercover, he takes up temporary residence in dorms to understand college kids juggling "thirsty Thursdays" and classes; meets with student leaders, including former Middlebury Campus Managing Editor Claire Bourne '04, to gauge the weight of honor codes and interviews residential life coordinators such as Ross Commons' Faculty Co-Head Steve Abbott to grasp how the undergraduate experience can be improved.

Seaman's investigation proves itself to be a thoroughly-researched, thought-provoking wake-up call. By widening his scope beyond the drug scandals and alcohol stories to address equally weighty problems in student body diversity, college administration and psychological welfare, Seaman's analysis is less exposé than examination of a multi-faceted dilemma at hand.

For many college students who pick up this revealing portrait of their very own lives, the surprise will not be that obtaining marijuana can be "easier than getting pizza" or that "hooking up" has almost entirely replaced the dating culture of old. The real surprise many are likely to discover when they behold the secrets lurking behind the subtitle of "what your college student won't tell you" is that, while such ways of life may shock the former generation, they are not scandalous to the students themselves. They are often just a matter of fact.

On the flip side, while "Binge" does present some cause for concern, it is by no means an encompassing account of life behind the ivy screen. Seaman's goal is to reveal what students themselves will not, and by necessity of this scope he does not reiterate the positive aspects of higher education that are already self-evident, if not in the pages of prospecti, then in the thousands of intelligent young people whose morals, far from eroded, have thrived through the process.

What will be most disappointing for members of the College community is the book's ultimate failure to grasp the stance of each issue. Seaman's book, after all, is a survey, not an evaluation of each institution. A brief interview with the Health Center's Associate Director Terry Jenny suggests that, in contrast to the rosy scenes of our remaining Vermont summer days, the binge culture problems on our turf are probably as dark as Seaman asserts.