I have to agree with the personal responsibility side of this issue. Rules and laws are only deterrants to the people that you don't have to worry about in the first place. The stricter you make the rules and laws, the more people are going to violate them. Does anyone know what two Federal laws were changed because almost no one would obey them? If you guessed Prohabition, that would be one. The other is the 55 MPH speed limit.
In the 80's we were allowed to have beer and liquor in the barracks. Hell, we had a soda machine that dispensed beer in our barracks, courtesy of NEX. If you were within a reasonable distance of the base and had too much to drink, you could call the Squardon Duty office and they would send the Duty Driver out to get you, no questions asked. We reimbursed the Navy for the gas we used, from our rec fund. We would usually go out in groups and if someone got hammered, the rest of us would make sure that he got back to the barracks without any trouble. If necessary we would let his roommate know to keep an eye on him or if there wasn't a roommate we would block his door open and let the Fire Watch know to keep an eye on him. We took care of each other.
Then in about 1986 things started to change. The beer machines were removed from the barracks because of the shift to the 21 drinking age. We could no longer use the Duty Driver to pick someone up who had too much to drink, because that meant that the Navy condoned our drinking. You would have some nitwit from MADD writing her Congresscritter that her tax dollars were being wasted by the Navy providing rides to drunks. Then you would see her and others of her type on the news crying about how the Navy was turning your little boys into alcoholics. Well, we can't have the Navy getting bad publicity, that might affect someone's chances for promotion. That was the start of these "zero tolerance" policies. Those backed things off a bit, untill the next moron made a fool of himself and it hit the news. Then they started not only nailing the person who was drunk, they started nailing anyone who was with him. It was now a violation to be caught escorting someone who was drunk back to the barracks.
During our Med cruise, on the Forrestal, in the Summer of 86, my squadron started a policy that you were not allowed to go on liberty by yourself. You had to have a buddy. You had to sign out in the Ready Room before you left and you had to sign in when you returned. If you got seperated from your buddy you both got hammered. If your buddy did something wrong you both got hammered. If you couldn't find someone who wanted to do what you wanted to do, you couldn't go on liberty, you couldn't leave the ship. Because of this being a squadron policy, you couldn't sign out with someone from another squadron or ship's company. It started becoming a crime to stagger across the fantail on the way back from liberty, even if you were not causing a problem and were being helped by friends.
I got out in 87, but from talking to friends and from what I've seen in the news and read here, things haven't gotten any better. I'm not suprised by the "me first" mentality the kids have today. Look at the zero tolerance crap going on in the schools today. Kids are going to jail for having a butter knife in their car. Screw up one time and your life is shot to hell. We need to get back to the looking out for each other mentality that existed before this.
The Academy's rules are not helping at all. Let's face it, some kids are going to drink, one way or another. What these policies have done is to make these kids afraid to help a classmate who has had too much to drink, because they might end up in trouble too. So they have made it easier and safer for the ones who might have helped to just look the other was and pretend that they hadn't seen anything.
o), STDs, unwanted pregnancies, sexual assault cases, etc...the list goes on and on. It's not all about sexual assault in the hall.
