Social Construction of Deviance Essay

Social Construction of Deviance

Deviance is generally a learned behavior, and a social construction. In the report on college binge drinking, that is seen by the finding that two out of every five students in a four-year college are binge drinkers. That was true for each of the years in which the survey was conducted. When looking at frequent binges, meaning at least three times in a two-week period, the number of college age drinkers still stands at one out of every five. When people live around colleges where there is a significant amount of binge drinking, they are more likely to experience problems as a consequence of that drinking. Additionally, students at that college can expect to experience disruptions due to the binge drinking of students, whether they are part of that culture or not. That is an important issue to consider, because it implies that it is not just the drinkers who are struggling with the difficulties caused by their behavior.

It is unlikely that these college students would binge drink if they lived at home with their parents and went to a community college.Not only would they have more supervision to consider, they would also avoid the culture of binge drinking, which is generally not associated with community colleges. Much of the reason for this lack of binge drinking in community colleges is that the students are not away from home. They live with their parents, or they may live with roommates or friends but close to home. They do not live on campus, which means they are more closely supervised and have less control over their lives in the sense that they cannot just do whatever they want. Since they do not have that control and the freedom that comes with it, they will avoid drinking to excess. They are not goaded into drinking by their peers, who often feel they can benefit from getting others to drink heavily. Fraternities, for example, often have excessive or binge drinking as part of their culture and as part of their initiation, making it an important part of their lifestyle.

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