hmmm... Social Design Issue... what?
By the title I’m sure that you have gathered that I am confused by this blog entry... What is a social design issue and where do I find it? After looking at other people's blogs, I am not alone. So basically I have figured out it's whatever you want it to be as long as you can tell why, and it is logical... so here it goes...
A social design issue is something that conflicts with a social aspect because of the way something is designed. So basically it could be the movement of traffic at a courtyard, or negative aspects of transportation. Or it could be the way people converse, and how it effects everything because of the way it's designed, for instance public/private cell phone conversations at a sit down dinner. Or at least these are the issues that come to mind when I hear "social design issues"...
So the issue I pick is freshman drinking. The social design issue with this is:
You can drink just not in the dorms... Well you can't "drink" because we are mostly all underage but you could go to any house party or frat and drink. And the police sit right outside of the frat house and on the corners, but they never pull anyone over or bust the parties...mostly because they are frats. But if a CA sees your door open and you have a beer can or a bunch of cups lying around, then you get written up. I think this design is poor.... wouldn't you want to have freshman safe and drink in their rooms; rather than drink other places and either walk or drive back. Where a lot of unsafe things could happen. Two weekends ago three guys got beat up a little bit past dinky town.
I’m not saying that we should just let all freshmen drink when and wherever they want because after all, we are underage...but then maybe we should be a little stricter about drinking, period... Right now it's basically ok to walk into the front lobby completely trashed and not even get questioned. It's like the dorms have a policy of don't see, don't ask. So at one end of the spectrum you have, do what you want, it's college... and at the other you have... if your in a room with alcohol, your going to get written up, and if it happens three times, your getting kicked out. After all it's college and that's one of the aspects of college, is drinking. You don't gain the freshman 15 because of food... I'm sorry, I know they tell you that, but the food is not that good.
I'm honestly not going to do anything about it, I’m not going to lie. It just seems so ridiculous... I would like to see some kind of meet in the middle for the issue. I'm not saying it's bad that freshman drink, because there is really nothing the college could do to stop it, but it seems unpractical to kick a freshman out of their dorm for "getting caught" for drinking.