Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You. Barrett Seaman

Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You



Download Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You



Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You Barrett Seaman. pdf ebook Publisher: Wiley Language: English Page: 322 ISBN: 0471491195, 9780471491194

From Publishers Weekly

Seaman, a longtime reporter and editor at Time magazine, retired in 2001. A trustee at his alma mater, Hamilton College, since 1989, he became increasingly curious about how the residential college experience had changed since his student years in the 1960s. Choosing 12 colleges, among them Harvard, Berkeley, Duke and Stanford, Seaman spent two years living at colleges and investigating campus life. His findings will be utterly unsurprising to most parents, students, professors and administrators: today's students are overextended, isolated by technology, drink too much, study too little and engage in sexual experimentation that can lead—in combination with alcohol and other wrong choices—to depression, diseases and even date rape. How do today's residential campuses differ from those of Seaman's day? The author provides no comparisons, yet he seems highly alarmed by the changes he perceives. He is at his best detailing statistics, whether on campus drinking or emotional stresses placed on students; weakest when focusing on the influence of technology (he decries Instant Messaging and multitasking), the impact of sexuality and the conflicts caused by race. Seaman does recognize the need for college administrators and professors to be more engaged in student life/lives; this book is addressed primarily to them. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From

After living in student housing, interviewing students and administrators, and driving around with campus security, Seaman, former Time magazine reporter and trustee at his alma mater, Hamilton College, offers a revealing look at life in the dorms. Seaman spent two years closely examining 12 residential colleges, private and public, with a range of size and geographic locations. He found a college life substantially different from his own experiences of the 1960s: binge drinking and drug abuse, rising suicide rates, casual relationships with students more likely to "hook up" than date, and tensions surrounding race and sexual orientation. Among the schools profiled are Hamilton, Harvard, University of Virginia, Indiana University, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. Seaman's book is not intended as a guide for parents and prospective students to use in choosing a college, but it offers thought-provoking commentary on student affairs, campus discipline, and reward systems for faculty. Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved