It seems MSU students are less rambunctious than in past years. Some might go so far as to call us “responsible.” However, in this case, responsibility is in the eye of the beholder.
The national College Health Assessment Survey with Olin Health Center seems idealistic in some ways. For example, school image should be taken with a grain of salt.
When presented with a choice of who we are, of course we want to be “academic, friendly and athletic.” One might add good looking, spontaneous, charming and any other adjectives that make us feel good.
Still, when the survey says 97 percent of MSU students report they don’t drive after five or more drinks, that raises eyebrows.
Likewise, with the statistic that 53.8 percent of students engaging in sexual intercourse in the last month used a condom. Those are large percentages of MSU’s student population, large enough to catch the eye of anyone who stumbles across the results.
There are probably better ways to actually determine the number of MSU students who don’t engage in high-risk behavior.
Perhaps comparisons of BAC’s after drunken driving arrests would give a more accurate picture of who was driving after five drinks or tracking the number of reported STD’s and pregnancies to determine whether safe sex was more common.
This survey feels more like how students want the world to be and not necessarily how it is. No one wants to be the drunken driver or the person who doesn’t know how to wrap it up when he or she gets down.
So, the answers become what we want to see, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Think of it as peer pressure. Perhaps none of the information is correct. Maybe only 80 percent of students don’t drive after the fifth drink. Perhaps only a quarter of the population is practicing safe sex.
The point is that the world we want to live in is a place where almost everyone calls a cab or has a designated driver. We want a world where most of us know how to have safe sex.
It isn’t only wishful thinking. MSU and East Lansing also have a role in creating those expectations. MSU and East Lansing have cops looking for drunken drivers.
Olin has programs such as the Condom Connection that do a bang up job of educating students. We, through either action or expectation, teach new students what is appropriate. There is no one thing at work.
What these survey results might indicate is positive of peer pressure. It isn’t about statistical significance so much as it is about students thinking their peers are doing “the right thing.”
No one wants to be the only person who gets behind the wheel drunk. No one wants to be alone — period.
The truth behind these results is they show us where we are going, but not where we are right now.
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