In many ways, life in college is like one big competition. If you’re not landing the coveted internship with J.P. Morgan, making the Dean’s List, playing college sports, or throwing the best parties—you’re left in the dust. Now the competitions have moved into a whole different arena and college women are starting to play some serious hardball.
The typical Friday night at college has transformed from kicking back and enjoying a few beers with friends, to drinking battles between the sexes. While college men have traditionally been stigmatized as binge drinkers, recent studies show that college women—in some attempt to prove that they can be one-of-the-boys—are becoming more prominent culprits of the binge drinking culture. (While there can be many definitions of binge drinking, the accepted definition is five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks in a row for women). As senior Syracuse University student Lisa Diebold told TIME magazine, “To be able to drink like a guy is kind of a badge of honor.” Read more…
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So who’s to blame for the lagging Irish support for the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan?
In part, it’s the U.S., suggests Sunday Times (Ireland edition) columnist David Quinn. Writing in the National Review On-Line last week, Quinn pointed the finger at the failure of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin to effectively counteract the anti-U.S. bias exhibited by much of the Irish media.
On one level, I would agree. In the Irish Times a columnist laments, “How did the world get to believe that terror and slaughter delivered by a bomb in a car was an atrocity; while much more terror and much more slaughter by airplane or missile is morally ok?” In the Irish Examiner another columnist mocks the futile “Bush fire…to smoke out Osama Bin Laden.”
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Afghanistan, Ireland, student
God has an uncanny way of sending me to the hinterlands of geopolitical significance in moments of conflict. When the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit I was in Eugene, Oregon. By the time the U.S. bombing and ground campaign got underway in early October in Afghanistan, I had safely settled in Limerick, Ireland, next to the thoroughly benign Shannon River. Naturally, as a student of conflict, this was at first a bit disgruntling.
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Education, international, Ireland, student