This was written by a young woman. She explains her experience at college. May this be a warning to all of you.

I have been musing on these thoughts for the past year, now, well before the Cornell seven rape case started dominating the news headlines this week.

No matter what the truth is of what happened that night, the case is a tragedy: the woman admits she was drunk and on drugs, and she consented to sexual intercourse with two men. Then she says she was raped by other men in the frat house.

Like many, it caused me to reflect on my own college experience. And so, I decided to make the following list of 16 Horrible Things I Was Exposed to in College.

I grew up with my younger sister, raised by a single mother. My dad was involved in our lives, but lived away from us as my parents were divorced. I would not say my mother was strict, but she definitely deliberately kept her two teenage girls very sheltered. She ran a small marketing business from the garage of our home, and she was there waiting for me every single day when I got home from high school, and always had a hot supper prepared for us.

Such peaceful teenage years. What a blessing. Then my mom, like thousands of other American parents, decided she had to send her daughters away to college. In hindsight, I was saddened to leave home, as I am a natural homebody, but I didn’t know how to express it at the time. Quite simply, there was never any other option presented to me. Nobody ever told me I could have just stayed home.

I decided to attend a large state university eight hours away. While I loved the outdoorsy nature of the school, here’s the bad stuff, nearly all of which I began witnessing from the minute my mom dropped me off on campus. (I am not saying I personally experienced all of these things, just what I witnessed.)

Fornication. Either in the form of casual sex – young people having sex freely – or young people coupling up and having serious boyfriends/girlfriends (with sexual intercourse). And with that promiscuity – college women have lots of casual and promiscuous sex with different sexual partners. It all falls under the umbrella of fornication, which God tells us is awful for us and soul destroying. (1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”)

STDs. You would be surprised how common they are on college campuses. And with that, unwanted pregnancies and the resulting abortions. 🙁

Drugs. There was marijuana, pills, Adderall (either to help study or to party), cocaine, psychedelic mushrooms.

Cigarettes. Nobody around me ever smoked until I got to college. Suddenly, it was something cool to do.

Alcohol and alcohol abuse. Not only is alcohol terrible for your health, but also the inevitable binge drinking and blackout drinking that is common at college parties, along with alcohol poisoning.

Socialism/Marxism/Communism. Colleges are places where free thinking should occur, but campuses have become hotbeds for radicalizing young people into these ways of thinking.

Sorority/fraternity culture, which I was a part of. I think many young people gravitate towards Greek life simply because they are lonely and looking to find some sort of family again to replace the one they left. It’s a toxic, mean-girl culture, and these frats and sororities are often gateways into drugs, alcohol, and sex assault – ahem, the Cornell 7. Fraternities and sororities also haze younger students with alcohol and cause fatal alcohol poisoning and blackout drinking.

Rape/sexual violence/sexual partner violence

Drunk/drugged driving

Lonliness/homesickness/anxiety/depression. Adults usually have the mental skills to cope with living alone. An 18-year-old doesn’t have those coping skills. They get sad and lonely, no different than a little kid at summer camp. They don’t have enough wisdom yet to know how to deal with loneliness.

And that leads me to the more serious occurrence: mental health breakdowns. I regularly saw young men and women have complete mental health breakdowns, some of them quite serious, where the teen could harm himself or others, and had to be hospitalized or heavily medicated/sedated. This happened in the dorms, where men and women had rooms right next to each other and had easy access to alcohol and drugs – NOT a good idea! I once saw a normally handsome, vibrant 18-year-old young man walking stark naked down the dorm hallway, with vomit or possibly excrement on his naked body, ranting out of his mind. He had had a complete psychotic break. While his case was severe, he was FAR from the only one. I don’t think most 18-20-year-olds are equipped to live alone, without their parents and unsupervised, while being exposed to all the trash on college campuses that I am listing here.

Sure, my sister and I got upset as teens, but I never witnessed such severe, frequent mental health breakdowns until I got to college.

Transgenderism/LGBTQ. I had met very few gay/lesbian people until I went to college. Suddenly, they surrounded me: people who experimented with same-sex sexual encounters, changed gender, or had “no” gender. You were immediately targeted if you didn’t accept and embrace these people.

Car crashes (can be fatal). Several of my friends were involved in very bad car wrecks or drove extremely dangerously, such as 105 MPH speeding, etc.

Interactions with law enforcement. I was a sheltered Pennsylvania girl. I had never had one single interaction with the cops except for the time they helped us find our lost dog when I was a kid! Once I got to college, I saw kids regularly get speeding tickets, run from the police, get arrested, busted for underage drinking, etc.

Overall bad men/bad influences. Without the supervision of my Mom and Dad, I was exposed to just a lot of loser men, for lack of a better term. Guys who smoked cigarettes, did drugs, were mean, weren’t educated, just not the kind of person I knew my Mom or Dad would want me hanging out with. As a young woman, it can be difficult to say no to their advances or predation, however you want to call it. If I was home, my parents would have easily blocked those guys out by slamming the front door!

Eating disorders/disordered eating/anorexia/bulimia/poor nutrition. I ate so well at home; my mom was a great cook, and I always had three nutritious meals a day, with tons of veggies. We never had soda or chips in my house, and I always walked everywhere and exercised. Once I got to college, I was left alone with the school cafeteria, where I promptly pigged out on pizza and doughnuts for a year straight. Gross. After I gained weight from that, I developed a minor eating disorder. Again, all stuff that wouldn’t have happened if I had just stayed home!

That’s the end of my list. Until I can think of more stuff.

This is the reality of American college campuses today. Sadly, even Christian colleges are not immune to all these problems, nor are some of the most “elite,” prestigious, academic institutions in our land. Your child will be exposed to all of this. And not merely exposed – your child may even get arrested, get an STD, become blackout drunk, take drugs,  become pregnant, be sexually assaulted, or worse.

Again, I want to emphasize that all of the above were things I was only exposed to once I got to college. Many others likely encountered sex, alcohol, drugs, etc. in their teen years, but I did not! I didn’t realize how blissfully naive my childhood was. God actually wants us to be that way! (Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”)

My question now is: Why on earth do we deliberately expose American young people to all this?

Why do we tell our young people this is normal for you? That this is part of growing up? No, getting an STD is not part of growing up. Being sexually assaulted is not part of growing up. Having an unwanted pregnancy at 21 is not part of growing up. Doing cocaine or getting blacked out drunk every weekend is not part of growing up. I know plenty of healthy, well-adjusted adults who NEVER experienced any of these things.

But sure, we tell our kids at 17, pack up everything you own, move hundreds of miles away from the watchful eyes of your parents who actually love and care about you, and live among young people your age, who are just as lost, lonely, and confused as you are.

Not only that, but we will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege; here’s our bank account.

It’s all nonsense. And we all fell for it.

Anywhere else, we call the above list of alcoholism, drugs, rape, and crime as societal ills, things to be condemned and prevented.

Why are they accepted as part of standard college life? Why have we allowed ourselves to become so hoodwinked by Big Academia?

It’s because we want to push all our children, girls and boys alike, to have careers, make a lot of money, and chase wealth, power, and prestige. None other than Satan is pulling the strings here, my friends. He is the prince of darkness, the father of lies. He lives on your fears — no, he absolutely thrives on them. He’s the one who whispers to parents, “Your daughter cannot simply be a housewife.” “Your son will never make enough money unless he’s highly educated.”

Now, before everyone jumps all over me, I am not saying we should not educate our young people, or our young women. I don’t want our country to become like some place run by the Taliban where women end schooling at age 13. But I argue that it would be safer and better for teenage girls — better for their welfare — if they live at home and attend college nearby. This would be good for both genders, teen boys and girls alike, actually. It’s not good to put a bunch of bored, horny 20-year-old men into a dormitory or house together, unsupervised, and give them unfettered access to money they will waste on alcohol and drugs. And it’s certainly not good to add young women to that scenario, either.

There is nothing wrong with keeping your children at home with you in their 20s and 30s. In fact, God tells us that’s the way it should be. Jesus lived at home until his 30s. The Bible tells us that a man should live at home with his parents until he meets his wife, and then the two shall live together and become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”)

Let’s normalize commuter schools. Let’s embrace community colleges. Trade schools. Anything that keeps our vulnerable (and valuable!) young people at home. They can drive or take the train to college classes, and then come home again at night. College dormitories need to become a thing of the past. Similar to LSD and free love, they’re nothing more than a poorly executed experiment from the free-wheeling ’60s and ’70s – and a cash grab for universities.

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