Well done sir.
His headline of his recent post: “YALE INTRODUCES BARTENDING CLASS FOR UNDERAGE STUDENTS” is inspiringly misleading. First of all, the headline suggests that this Yale College provided bartending class is explicitly for underage students. But if he read the full YDN article he cited in his post, he would have learned that the class is open to all Yale College students—from 18 to however old that guy auditing your French section is. Secondly, even if the class was only for underage students, it would be totally kosher: according to the Connecticut Law cited in the YDN, bartenders must be 18—not 21— in order to bartend legally.
But he says other things I disagree with—let’s move on past the headline. In the actual post, he considers the implication of this new class:
What could be more vital of an Ivy League university than teaching underage students what a drink is supposed to taste like? And they announced it with such a somber, self-serious tone, full of platitudes about “high-risk drinking” etc.
To finally conclude:
“What a coddled generation. What’s next? Toilet training classes?”
Here, Natty Hard states that our generation’s need to take an institution sponsored bartending class is but another example of us being coddled. While I agree that we probably are coddeled, like very coddled, I don’t think this drinking class is an example of our inability to do anything for ourselves. These classes are attempting to normalize safe drinking behavior as a part of the student culture at a school where binge drinking and other unhealthy social behaviors have been normalized. If to Natty, this goal acknowledges that the University is encouraging underage drinking, and that this is a symptom of a larger liberal university culture of sanctioned and even endorsed exploration of sex and illegal substances, I would say that it’s better to be coddled then to be sheltered.
Sorry this isn’t Bob Jones University. (But I actually don’t know why he doesn’t have a problem with a school that advertises itself as “BJU”).
On a related note, thanks for the heads up on these classes. They seem really great.
