Throughout the summer before my freshman year of college, I listened to my high school friends complain about the online “Alcohol EDU” courses their new schools were forcing them to take. Since I’d heard nothing about it from Georgetown, I happily assumed I was in the clear and didn’t have to worry about completing any two hour tutorials (although as all you Georgetown freshmen know, I couldn’t have been more wrong).
Our version of Alcohol EDU, called “Think About It,” was a pretty funny running joke at first. It featured cheesy graphics and an absurd cast of characters led by Tom, who takes all of his clothes off to go to the bathroom, and Maddie, who carries around a packet of hot sauce because “it’s the only thing she can taste anymore.” Most freshmen saw it as a waste of time and spent the first twenty minutes mocking it and looking for ways to avoid watching the videos. As people started clicking through the screens of the tutorial, though, the laughter slowly turned into conversation. While it was still easy to joke about the weird banalities of the program and brag about how many badges we had received, the thoughts of the freshmen around me—and all over campus—were more than a little influenced by the more serious content.
Interspersed with the goofy videos and commentary were some heavy concepts, usually supplemented by jolting bits of information. The survey statistics, which asked an agree/disagree question and showed percentage comparisons of the answers between genders, were the most shocking and certainly the most discussed aspect of the program. For instance, after learning through some unavoidable interactive sections the facts about assault, we were told that 63 percent of men and 49 percent of women think that sexual assault is “mostly a problem of miscommunication.” And while most people complained about how boring the majority of the tutorial was, facts like these were undeniably jarring.
While I definitely could have spent the two hours I put into “Think About It” doing homework (or more realistically, watching Netflix) I have to admit that I’m glad it was required for all Georgetown freshmen. The program, while lame and at times interminable, eventually fostered a lot of positive conversation and learning about the social and legal issues that are present on any college campus. More importantly, it really did make people think.