Opinion

ESSIEN: Vendors selling alcoholic beverages at sporting events

Christiana Essien

I personally feel colleges should not allow vendors to sell alcoholic beverages at sporting events because there would be an increase in many issues such as car accidents, underage drinking and sexual assault. 

According to alcoholrehabguide.org, “It’s estimated that 50 percent of those students engage in binge drinking, which involves consuming too much alcohol in too little time.” 

With that statistic alone, imagine being at a game and seeing your peers act out and make a fool of themselves. 

I, for one, have seen what alcohol could do to people and it is not a pleasant sight to see. As the saying goes, one drink can turn into two drinks and so on. Before you know it, students are making their way to their car or having to be pulled out of an event due to having too many drinks.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states, “Every day in America, another 30 people die as a result of drunk driving crashes. That’s one person every 48 minutes.”

Aside from car fatalities, the rate of underage drinking would be at an all time high, if colleges allowed vendors to sell alcoholic beverages at games. In 2016, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that 19 percent of youths aged 12 to 20 years drink alcohol and 12 percent reported binge drinking in the past 30 days. Therefore, underage students would seek this time to have “the college experience,” which involves drinking until they’re passed out or drinking to have a good time. 

Due to this, many individuals would be arrested for the act of giving underage students drinks because how else would students have access. 

I personally feel it would cause a lot of unnecessary issues that could be avoided if colleges don’t allow vendors to sell alcohol. 

Last but not least, I firmly stand on colleges not allowing vendors to sell alcoholic beverages due to an inclination of sexual assault. 

According to alcohol.org, About 43 percent of sexual assault events involve alcohol use by the victim; 69 percent involve alcohol use by the perpetrator.

 In the campus safety article, it is reported that more than half of women who experience sexual assault of any kind on campus never tell anyone. As a rule, this is on the grounds that ladies feel they might be put down, doubted, or denied support. Frequently, the perpertrators of rape are protected over the person in question,who is shamed or even blamed for behavior seen to be contributing to the assault, including if the individual is drunk. Here are several reasons why I believe that colleges should not allow vendors to sell alcoholic beverages at sporting events.