The start of schoolies week on the Gold Coast resulted in 36 arrests of former year 12 students. According to reports, 31 of these were alcohol related, an increase on numbers from the same time last year.

Schoolies week was around when I completed the HSC years ago but it is was nothing like the size of the event today. Close to 25,500 identity wristbands have been issued by police to school leavers. Despite its size, this is not an event of which we can be proud. It is an awful spectacle to see drunken teenagers vomiting into gutters and publicly sleeping off hangovers. And this is before counting the unbridled drug use and one-off sexual encounters that many will regret afterwards. The police report that a lot of parents have supplied alcohol to their children.

The official and community silence regarding this annual mass outpouring of poor behaviour is astonishing. The only voices usually heard are those of the hapless police, left to clean up the mess. .
Public education campaigns mounted by the government in 2009, warning against the over-consumption of alcohol by young people, have clearly not been heard by this student cohort. Indeed, research to be presented at a conference in December also highlights that university students likewise are not heeding the message about the excessive consumption of alcohol.
Schoolies week and the aftermath of the recent Facebook scandal at St Paul's College has highlighted once again that an endemic culture of binge drinking exists amongst many under 25s. Like the Gold Coast police, the leadership of university colleges struggle to deal with this and its behavioral consequences - intimidation and bullying of students, drug-taking, alcoholism and violence against women. Sound familiar?

A near-paralysis has set in as college Principals and their Boards struggle to face a microcosm of society's problems.

Let me suggest two radical propositions. In relation to schoolies week, we need to develop some other mass method of marking the end of high school which celebrates this rite of passage in a positive way, rather than through a haze of drugs and alcohol. Now there's a good community campaign for someone.

Secondly, in consultation with their Principals and Boards, all the colleges at Sydney University (and possibly other university campuses) should agree to trial a 'dry semester' at the same time. All would have the same disciplinary measures, protocols and policy parameters for any breaches. This would run from formal commencement to the end of term, and might include a 'special events' exemption for one or two nights. Dry university colleges exist in Sydney and so there is practice model with a long history. It can be done.

The national 'Dry July' campaign encourages community moderation, so these suggestions are no mere wowserism. How about the colleges testing a mass dry-out as a first step to dealing with what are evidently endemic problems? They might even find that life in college is more manageable as a result.