Who should be held accountable?

Let's say I walked into a store and held up the cashier at gunpoint and then proceeded to take all of the store's money from the cash drawers. If and when I was caught, would you hold me responsible for robbing the store, or would you hold the guy who sold me the gun responsible? I hope you would say I would be responsible, regardless of how I got the gun or whom I got the gun from. Accountability for our actions; such an interesting thought. In the last year or so, we have been bombarded with questions of accountability on this campus when it comes to drinking, much of it pertaining to underage consumption. \nLast year, when Seth Korona died after drinking and doing a keg stand at the Theta Chi fraternity house, heads were spinning. It was tragic, like every fatal accident that occurs.\nPreventable? Maybe.\nPredictable? No.\nDean of Students Richard McKaig, in response to the events surrounding Korona's death, told the IDS in a Feb. 5 article, "It would've been nice to hold someone accountable."\nWell what about the individual who chooses to drink?\nI feel terrible about what happened to Korona, and I am not trying to turn this into an individualized debate because the fact of the matter is, this happens everywhere on college campuses nationwide and this is not the first incident to hit the IU campus, either.\nMy problem with the whole situation, though, is that the individuals who choose to drink, who choose to attend the party, who choose to get behind the wheel and drive, who choose to snort a line of coke, etc., are the ones who need to be held accountable for their own actions. No one else is to blame.\nGranted it might be a lot easier to blame your misfortunes on someone else or to point to other excuses, but as students, I am pretty confident that we are all aware that the legal drinking age is 21. There is no more of a drinking problem on this campus than any other college campus. \n"Every college and university in the country wrestles with (alcohol)," Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm told the IDS in a Feb. 6 article. "There are no magic solutions."\nFraternities are being singled out unfairly because of past alcohol-related incidents. Is it the fraternity or the individual drinking that should be held responsible? What about shutting down McNutt the next time a student drinks too much and has to be taken to the hospital to get his stomach pumped? Or how about you start making house calls around campus and kicking whole groups of students out of their houses because one of the roommates was drinking underage. \nReally, if we are going to start blaming people, let's hold Anheuser Busch and other beer companies accountable for brewing the beer and marketing their product to young people.\nI am not advocating fraternities being able to go buck wild and throw huge bashes that openly serve underage students, but at the same time, members of fraternities who are 21 years of age should be able to have parties, have alcohol inside their houses and not be held responsible for their peers who aren't of legal age. Students will always be able to locate alcohol -- whether it be through a friend, older sibling or fraternity house.\nLet's hold members of the greek system to the same standards as everyone else.