A vintage sign at the Iowa State University chapter of the YMCA.

GENESEO NY — Two week ago, I fired off a missive about SUNY Geneseo’s silence following the death of a college student by alcohol poisoning.

While it’s easy to drum up umbrage over less important matters — like wearing blackface on Halloween or cheating on a final exam —our college town’s ‘alcohol problem’ is a harder issue in which to find satisfying closure.

Where does one point their finger? Who is the clear victim? I’d argue that the students pouring booze down the throats of those poor PIGS pledglings are a product of a permissive culture. That, after all, is the problem with alcohol. We’re culturally conditioned to see binge drinking as “normal,” and even a marker of social acceptibility.

There was a time in our history when it was normal to openly hate people based on race, religion or class. (I’m naïvely assuming that era has passed.) There was a time when we dueled with pistol or blade at offenses to our honor. There was a time when people were cruelly imprisoned for life if they could not pay their debtors.

There are so many quaint, awful habits and trends we can look back upon and feel relief that we live in a more enlightened era. Perhaps we Americans, so uptight in our moralizing — yet so prone to hedonist impulse — will look back on our binge drinking rites of passage with the same morbid fascination.

Until then, the best we can expect from our institutions — government, education, police and the courts — is zero tolerance of this unhealthy, lethal pursuit.

Additionally, those social pillars should find ways to promote healthier living — to create places where people can find more to do than shop, eat or sedate themselves.

Credit must be given where credit is due.

SUNY Geneseo has taken the impressive step of offering land and funding for a new YMCA center in Geneseo. The project is being ushered in by the Batavia-based chapter with leadership from various stakeholders throughout Livingston County.

Open land is a precious commodity in Geneseo. With the village business district sandwiched between the college, bucolic residential streets and two historic estates, new developments often have to locate themselves out in the Route 20A strip malls.

The scuttlebutt was that the YMCA would elect to build in on of the newer outlying neighborhoods — like Crossett Road or Jacqueline Way. What a shame that would have been for kids on foot looking for cheap afterschool recreation.

The college plan would locate a $30 million recreation center at the bottom of the campus, with public access on Route 63. Walkers in the community will become more acquainted with the campus on their way to workouts and college students will rub elbows more often with local “townies.”

Since the skating rink closed in the old Town Hall back in 1968, Geneseo hasn’t had a public space like this. Kudos to SUNY Geneseo and the YMCA for helping to curb binge drinking by seeking to provide young people a place to do something far more productive with their time.