By Jeanine Budd
Whether it’s fraternity boys and sorority girls, college athletes or your average student, the stereotype stands firm: They drink, and they drink a lot.
According to data compiled by campus research groups, this stereotype might not be entirely off-mark.
“Northeastern students seem to have statistically higher rates of binge drinking than other campuses in the United States,” said Amaura Kemmerer, a counselor from BASICS, which is part of a Northeastern alcohol and drug use research program.
Although Kemmerer said representatives haven’t finished analyzing the data they’ve collected, the heaviest drinkers Basics sees are freshmen, which is consistent with national data and averages they’ve compiled.
Abigail Hawkins, a middler English major, said for a freshman, drinking is almost a right of passage. She said during her freshman year, she drank out of curiosity.
“I just kind of went with the flow,” she said. “There were no real apprehensions; I figured ‘why not?’ There weren’t enough reasons not to do it.”
Hawkins said while she was experimenting with drinking, she didn’t let it affect her academic performance. In fact, she said her lifestyle freshman year was mild compared with her peers’ habits.
“I might be getting drunk on a Friday night, but by Saturday morning, Sunday evening, I’m perfectly fine. As opposed to other people who are drunk Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night and maybe even Monday morning,” she said.
Kemmerer said most students she sees for counseling say they drink because it’s built into the social norm of college.
“I think what’s interesting is, there’s a big difference between people who drink socially and in a more moderate way, as opposed to students who drink just to get drunk or just to black out,” she said. “I think there’s a big spectrum, but it always seems to come back to sort of a sensory perception of, ‘this is what normal college students do,’ and that they’re in a time in their life where they do this kind of drinking.”
Kemmerer pointed to what the research program calls a “maturing-out” pattern, where the heaviest drinking happens during freshman year, and with each successive year the amount decreases. Around 75 percent of students fall into this pattern, she said.
Hawkins, who falls into this category, said, the novelty of drinking eventually wore off.
“I began to notice that nine times out of 10, the parties were actually horribly lame and the only reason why anyone was having a good time was because they were too drunk to notice,” she said.
Nikki Frankel, a middler English major, said she took a different approach when she entered college.
“I can’t say that I’ve never had any alcohol whatsoever, but I can count the occasions off the top of my head,” she said. “The way that people are when they’re drunk is really annoying. Nothing about getting drunk really appeals to me, like forgetting where you’ve been or getting sick or anything. There are just too many other ways to have fun.”
For Frankel, there’s a number of reasons she chooses not to drink, even in the context of a society where it seems everyone is.
“Part of it is the fact that my father was an alcoholic and he pretty much died from it. And they don’t have proof that it’s hereditary, but I just don’t want to give it a chance,” she said. “I’m also on a full academic scholarship, so I take it kind of seriously. If I get caught with alcohol or anything like that once, I basically lose my scholarship, so it’s really not worth it.”
Kemmerer said about half the students she speaks with acknowledge that, although partying may impact their academics, it doesn’t usually present itself as a pressing problem.
“Maybe they’re still getting a 3.0, which is a perfectly respectable GPA, and they’re for all intents and purposes doing really well, but they acknowledge that they could be doing a lot better if they weren’t drinking so much,” she said. “I think part of the challenge of coming up with a solution to the heavy drinking in college is that a lot of students drink without the consequences. They’re able to drink heavily and they seem to also be able to manage their work really well. I think that in those cases, I tend to encourage them to think about how that may affect them in the long term.”
