Soongsil University used to allow its students to drink inside the campus, but on-campus drinking has been banned since 2010 because of the many problems caused by it. There are still strong arguments against the prohibition, but I think that its positive effect outweighs its negative effects because the permission of on-campus drinking brings about many problems, such as ruining the academic atmosphere of the campus, causing environmental problems, and shaping a wrong drinking culture between the juniors and seniors.
First of all, the permission of drinking inside the campus hinders the students from focusing on their studies, and thus ruins the academic atmosphere of the university. In the survey entitled “Korean Drinking Culture and Alcohol Research,” 32.8% of the 4,016 student respondents said that they tend not to attend class when they enjoy drinking inside the campus. Besides, such practice can negatively influence the other students. In my case, I used to lose the desire to study whenever I saw many groups of students who were drinking amidst a friendly atmosphere on my way to the library.
The second negative effect of on-campus drinking is related to the campus environment, as drinking inside the campus can produce lots of trash. Before the no-drinking policy was implemented, for example, I often saw street
cleaners early in the morning struggling to clean up a lot of trash left from drinking parties at night inside the campus. In several cases, traces of throwing-up from heavy drinking could be found. Also, it has been said that some drunken students can damage school properties as people usually have little self-control after heavy drinking.
Therefore, allowing drinking inside the campus can cause serious problems like these.
Finally, this practice can give rise to a wrong drinking culture. According to a recent survey by an online job search site, 73.2% of the 437 student respondents claimed that the oncampus drinking culture causes many problems. One of them is coercing others into drinking. Especially, the school seniors tend to force the juniors to drink, using their authority as seniors. Such an authoritarian practice deeply ingrained in the on-campus drinking culture is indeed a serious problem.
For the aforementioned reasons, I think that it is a very good decision to prohibit on-campus drinking. Some may say that the old days, when they used to have beer with friends inside the campus, after school, were better. They were able to enjoy drinking without spending much money, and they were able to form special memories inside the campus. Considering the problems related to on-campus drinking, however, we need to think of alternatives to on-campus drinking for forming special memories inside the campus, such as on-campus cherry blossom viewing or taking a rest at the wooden stairs, where a refreshing breeze is blowing. As such, the negative effects of drinking inside the campus can be done away with. In other words, the only way to get rid of the negative effects of oncampus drinking is to prohibit the drinking of all alcoholic beverages inside the campus.
