Melissa Whiten is a senior public relations major and writes 'The Greenroom' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
College professors appear to be running out of ways to relate to their students.
Why else would a professor announce to a class that he or she is assigning a project on a beer company because "most college students like to talk about beer"? I'm going to put some faith in my fellow students and assume this isn't always true.
Some students did act as though Mayor Canan had canceled Muncie's water supply when they found out the liquor stores were no longer selling kegs, but this doesn't mean that all Ball State University students are so obsessed. Whether someone drinks a lot or doesn't drink at all, I'm sure he or she would agree that he or she has other interests and other things that define him or her as a person - unless he or she is an alcoholic.
Many students are regular partiers and still work hard in school and in quality extracurricular activities related to their majors. Plus, plenty of students don't drink at all, so it gets tiring to be put into the category of the partying college student who is obsessed with drinking beer every night.
Not only is this a poor way of relating to students, but it's also feeding the problem that Ball State and other colleges fight every year: binge and underage drinking on campuses.
Studies done between 1993 and 2004 by Harvard's School of Public Health found that aggressive advertising in newspapers feeds the problem of heavy drinking on campuses. At Ball State, we not only have advertising in newspapers but also in the classrooms.
Students are constantly told that college is the time for them to prepare themselves for their future careers - to start maturing and getting serious about their responsibilities. Then, they go to class and receive an assignment to do a case study on Big Sky beer, or they receive an assignment in chemistry asking them to show equivalencies of beer to kegs instead of milliliters to liters.
A student in my class informed our teacher that he had already been given the case study assignment on Big Sky beer in another class, which proves other teachers are using the same tactics for getting their students' attention.
With professors continually bringing up alcohol for examples in class, it makes it sound like college students are supposed to drink. This seems like a strange thing for professors to be promoting when Ball State officials work so hard with alcohol awareness on campus.
It is comforting to have a teacher who is laid back enough to talk about partying, but when it's the hot topic in several classes, it gets boring. Why can't teachers be laid back by having a sense of humor or having everyday conversations with their students about what annoyed them that day?
In addition, Ball State's Web site shows statistics from studies showing that "nearly two-thirds of students drink zero to four drinks when they party, and 62 percent drink two times a month or less." So, most Ball State students don't even drink excessively, but the impression given to incoming students is that getting drunk is common and expected from college students.
Perhaps my problem is that I don't personally like beer. I prefer my Bailey's, so if a teacher asked me to participate in a conversation on beer, I would only be able to do so by saying, "Um ... it's foamy, and it kind of looks like pee."
So, not everyone can relate to this topic, at least not for the 10th time. The bottom line: Teachers need new material.
Write to Melissa at
mmwhiten@bsu.edu
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
