I enjoy listening to your wide-ranging program, as usual. I was especially fascinated by the discussion of the conjunction of racism and prohibition, which I wasn’t familiar with before.

However, I was surprised to hear the response to the 24 year old when the topic of the history of controlling teenage and young adult alcoholism came up. The hosts seemed to say that teenage drinking only became an acknowledged problem in the 20th century.

However, Thomas Jefferson did not and would not have agreed. According to a document from the U of Virginia’s President’s office (www.virginia.edu/president/kenanscholarship/…/jenny_graves.pdf or http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.virginia.edu%2Fpresident%2Fkenanscholarship%2Fwork%2Farchive_files%2Fjenny_graves.pdf&ei=TwzEUKT-Kqf-0gGo-ICADA&amp usg=AFQjCNGM4wrQBzGccGhjRRxJqyZcJ9o6IQ), (though I don’t know the provenance of the this document and it’s not footnoted), one of the reason Jefferson wanted to start the UVA was because of the, “riotous behavior he witnessed as a student at the College of William and Mary.”

However:

“At the time of Jefferson’s death in 1826 it was widely believed that the University of
Virginia was a failure, a hotbed for heathens, and a place riddled with student rebellions.
One critic of the University stated, “ I regard the University of Virginia as a school of
infidelity- a nursery of bad principles.” Indeed in 1826 UVA student John Carter wrote,
“Here nothing is more common than to see a student so drunk as to be unable to walk.”
The unruly students, almost all of whom were the sons of wealthy Virginia planters, often
engaged in drunken riots.”