Volume 51, Number 20 · December 16, 2004
Pictures from an Institution
By Daniel Mendelsohn
I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 676 pp., $28.95
Two unrelated items from The New York Times of Tuesday, November 9, 2004, direct our attention to crises in American higher education. The first, which appears on page A16 of the national section, is grim. Entitled 'Drinking Deaths Draw Attention to Old Campus Problem,' it is a report on the deaths of two teenaged undergraduates at American universities. One, a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Colorado State University, died of alcohol poisoning 'after an evening out with friends in which she drank the equivalent of 30 to 40 beers and shots'; the other, an eighteen-year-old freshman at the University of Colorado, died after a night spent 'chugging whiskey and wine as part of an initiation ceremony with his fraternity brothers.' Such deaths, as the article makes clear, are not all that exceptional: according to a study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 1,400 college students between eighteen and twenty-four die each year as the result of excessive drinking.
Review, 4290 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |