Furthermore, college administrators and university fundraisers are aware that fielding successful teams is important for student recruitment and for maintaining alumni support. This emphasis on university athletics, however, may have the residual effect of amplifying heavy drinking on campus.
A large body of research has firmly established the powerful companionship between athletic events and alcohol use. This relationship is particularly strong among college students. According to college alcohol researchers Henry Wechsler and Bernice Wuethrich in their book Dying to Drink, college students who identify themselves as sports fans are more likely than other students to be frequent binge drinkers and are at an increased risk for alcohol-related injuries and other problems.5 An obvious example of the link between college drinking and sports is the tailgate party. Tailgaters traditionally gather in the parking lots, the housing, and the open spaces surrounding a sports arena to prepare for a game with the organized consumption of food and alcohol. According to Stephen Linn in The Ultimate Tailgater’s Handbook, tailgating has some deep and unexpected roots in American culture.6 Linn locates the first American college tailgate party in 1869 at the Rutgers-Princeton football game, but suggests that attendees at other historical events also organized parties around their spectatorship. Linn argues, for example, that spectators of Civil War battles engaged in early forms of tailgating:
Consider the Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Enthusiastic Union supporters from the Washington, D.C., area arrived with baskets of food and shouts of “Go Big Blue!” to watch the opening battle in America’s Civil War. Historians generally agree this was a case of the right idea at the wrong time, war not being a spectator sport. Still, for those who attended, there was socializing and tradition, tension and excitement. And on that day there was even precedent set for future upsets by Southern teams against their Northern opponents. Most important, the incident effectively established definite boundaries and regional differences in tailgating traditions. Clearly, the idea appealed to hungry partisan supporters.7
Furthermore, Linn maintains that the origins of the modern tailgate party can be traced to the integration of the automobile into American social life:
The advent of the automobile led to the democratization of pre-football partying, and the post–World War II popularity of station wagons provided both a name and a platform for the burgeoning practice. During the 1980s and 1990s tailgating took on a life of its own and turned into a social movement of sorts. As gas grills became more portable and coolers grew wheels, rows of parking spots transformed themselves into communities, some with their own names and flags.8
While tailgating at college football games is ostensibly a pregame activity, it often turns out to be the main event. That is, many tailgaters never make it to the game, especially since many universities have banned the sale of alcohol at college gridiron contests. Postgame alcohol consumption has also received a lot of attention in the media. Alcohol-driven celebrations after a big win (or a big loss) sometimes get violent. Take, for example, the drunken brawls in Bloomington, Indiana, and College Park, Maryland, after the University of Maryland beat Indiana University in the NCAA basketball championship in 2002. Both campuses were reportedly besieged by drunken revelers who burned couches and engaged in violent confrontations with local police.9
Media treatments of the relationship between college drinking and sports tend to focus on sensationalistic stories about postgame riots. But my student respondents give less dynamic, more matter-of-fact accounts about sports and drinking. For this twenty-two-year-old male student and his friends, getting drunk is quite simply a compulsory exercise before they cheer on their favorite team: “We really wanted to get hammered on Saturday. We are all fans of the Buckeyes, so we started [drinking] before the game on Saturday at about 2:00 P.M.” For some hard-drinking sports fans, getting wasted and watching a game become seamlessly interwoven. The following field note—written in a college bar—depicts how a group of college drinkers actually integrate the practice of alcohol consumption with the dynamics of the game that they are watching:
I’m sitting at the bar in front of a bank of television sets, next to two college females, on a Sunday afternoon. I’m drinking Diet Pepsi and watching my favorite team—the Washington Redskins— underachieve in embarrassing fashion. The women are part of a large contingent cheering for the Cleveland Browns (a team that might actually be worse than Washington). One of them is wearing a Browns jersey and the other one is sporting a Colts jersey. It’s about 2 P.M. They are getting hammered. During the course of the Browns game they each drink 3 twenty-four ounce beers and multiple shots of something brown (maybe whiskey, I can’t tell). They ceremoniously drink a shot for an interception that Browns’ Quarterback Derek Anderson throws, a shot for the TD pass he completes, and a shot for deceased NFL QB Steve McNair. They are screaming for the Browns to put in Brady Quinn, cursing Braylon Edwards [for dropping a pass], and cheering for Joshua Cribbs, whose exciting punt return inspires them to take another shot. By 4, the young women are squinty-eyed and slightly slurring, but not fall-down drunk. The Browns manage to take the Bengals to overtime and so they have another shot of the brown stuff. I left after my game was over so didn’t see what happened to them. By the way, the Browns eventually lost. I figure the girls drank a shot for that too. (Field notes, September 2009)
For these college women, and many other rabid fans of the National Football League, the party doesn’t stop on Saturday night. If drinking is perceived as a required activity while watching one’s favorite NFL team, sobriety will have to wait until Monday.
School’s Out!
According to many of my informants, college drinkers treat the opening or closing of a school term as a good time for a celebration. Thus, the academic calendar is used strategically to manage one’s drinking affairs. Many respondents reported that their decision to enter a drinking episode was related to the stage in the academic year. Starting a new academic term, it appears, is reason enough to drink:
It was the first Saturday night back at school, so obviously my friends and I wanted to go out and party. (twenty-year-old female)
Q: What was the occasion?
A: There is always an occasion; this time it was coming back for the beginning of spring quarter. (twenty-year-old male)
And the end of the term, especially the completion of finals week, is another popular time for heavy drinking:
Once upon a time, on the last weekend of spring quarter, my friends and I decided to drink alcohol. It was our last weekend to spend with our friends until we returned in the fall, so we all wanted to hang out together. And, of course, what else do u do on a Friday night before finals week—study? I think not. It’s time to drink. (nineteen-year-old female)
[W]e were going to drink to celebrate the end of exam week. (eighteen-year-old female)
Some of my respondents cited school-related stress as a reason to drink. Seeking intoxication as a reward for getting through a challenging round of exams, for example, is a good reason to drink:
My friends and I had a long week full of hard tests so we decide to reward ourselves with a night of leisurely drinking. (twenty-one-year-old male) I’m not someone who ever really needs to drink, but on occasion I will. This was one of those occasions. It had been the most stressful week to date in my college career. I had three exams and a large project all due in this one week. All week I worked my ass off, either studying or doing research. It was very tough.… In celebration, I decided to drink that night. (nineteen-year-old male)
My respondents, however, rarely attributed their drinking to stress (school-related or otherwise). In fact, very few of the students surveyed in the current sample mentioned stress as a reason for their indulgences. More commonly, informants saw their drinking as an unquestioned ritual or as a form of celebration. Birthday celebrations, in particular, set the stage for many of the drinking stories analyzed here.
It’s My Birthday!
Birthdays are
typically treated by university students as occasions to drink heavily. James, for example, was on a mission:
It was Saturday morning and I decided that since Sunday was my birthday, I would get drunk all day long until midnight.… After pregaming for a few hours, I headed for a party where we heard they had about 3,000 jello shots and six kegs. I took 6 jello shots right off the bat. That is when I became aware of the presence of everclear in the shots. So I was pretty drunk by now, but I still proceeded to drink 6 more beers and 7 more jello shots before midnight. To top it off, I did a keg stand at the stroke of midnight. All through the night I had been smoking marijuana so I was fucked up hardcore. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (James, nineteen-year-old freshman)
Moreover, college birthday celebrations are sometimes regarded as appropriate times for codrinkers to get the “birthday boy or girl” really hammered. The strangeness of this practice—of delivering a ritualistic alcoholic beat-down to someone on their “special day”—is not lost on Paul, a twenty-year-old sophomore, who describes his recent birthday celebration:
I normally don’t go out on Tuesdays; I usually stick to the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but it was my birthday so a bunch of my friends and I decided to celebrate it.… [A] couple of guys came to my room and we had some Coronas and then I think we had one, two, three shots. Guys just came in and said, you know, “Happy birthday, take a shot.” So, I did that… then we went to the bar… started out with a pitcher and what not and then, then about everyone I knew started buying me shots, so, you know, I had, I had a good amount of shots. It’s a little hazy there but uhh [laughs]… let’s see… I had some Old Granddad, a lemon drop or two, some Jager, mixing a lot, not feeling very well on that. But I had some decent beer and some Natty Light beer. Umm, and then I’d say, I was probably there for an hour and I was intoxicated.
At this point in the interview, Paul begins to reflect on the practice of heavy birthday drinking and its consequences:
You know, it’s kind of a weird tradition on your birthday, you know, you go out and throw up all over everyone. But, you know, they were giving me some crazy shots, like Old Granddad is horrible, and tequila, stuff like that. And… around 11:30, maybe, I have to definitely go and throw up. So, I felt a lot better after that.
As Paul points out, the “weird” tradition of dangerously heavy drinking on one’s birthday is driven, in part, by the cultural mandate to get the birthday boy or girl trashed. It appears that many members of the college drinking scene take for granted that they will give their birthday-celebrating friend a compulsory deluge of alcohol whether he or she wants it or not. Indeed, sometimes a birthday blackout appears to be delivered against the celebrant’s will:
It was my 21st birthday and I wanted to celebrate but not to the point of passing out. But my friends and coworkers wanted to get me wasted.… I remember throwing up and after that my boyfriend told me that I passed out.… (twenty-one-year-old female)
The assumed relationship between a twenty-first birthday and total incapacitation appears to be a meaning that is often shared by the celebrant and his or her friends. As he describes his alcohol consumption at his recent twenty-first birthday party, Alex, a junior, seems to be a mere pawn in the “birthday-drinking game”:
I’ll tell you about my 21st birthday. It was about one week ago on a Thursday. It was assumed by all my friends that I would be going to the bars to celebrate. We left at 10 P.M. after having about 3 Natty Lights. We went to play a leisurely game of pool. After about three more beers, the bar began to get full at around 11 P.M. Many of my friends showed up and started buying me shots. I had so many in one hour that I ended up blacking out and not remembering anything else that night so the rest is only hearsay from what my friends say.… After unknown amount of shots and beers from 11 P.M. to 1 A.M., I had to puke out the back door of the bar.… I remember nothing but knew I had a good time.
Overall, nearly 10 percent of the drinking stories in this sample included a birthday celebration as the motivation to drink.10 Getting drunk on one’s birthday is not unique to college life, but the fact that most college students have their twenty-first birthday while they are in college means that an important transition into the world of “legal” drinking commonly occurs while in the presence of friends, roommates, and other codrinkers in the dorms, houses, and bars of American college campuses. Those who argue that “21 is not working” may have a point when you consider that college effectively places scores of new twenty-one-year-olds in a cultural matrix of heavy-drinking norms, low parental supervision, and plentiful drinking establishments that are not policing the overserving of birthday celebrants. On the other hand, the current data demonstrate that college kids do not need a special occasion to get twisted. Often, drinking just sort of happens.
“Sure, I’ll drink. What the hell!”
Calendars, school schedules, and birthdays do not always dictate a drinking episode. The opportunities and temptations to get wasted sometimes present themselves spontaneously. And sometimes, as Tara’s story illustrated, a night initially defined as going out for “a few drinks” can spontaneously evolve into a drunken free-for-all. Remember that Tara got trashed despite her good intentions to drink lightly because of her early morning class the next day. The desire to stay sober, then, may get overridden by the allure of intoxication for a variety of reasons. Bill, for example, was not planning to drink on the night in question, but found the inspiration:
At first I was not really all “gung-ho” about drinking that night as I was rather exhausted from the previous day, which included an 8-mile hike followed by some low-key drinking. However, there were many friends down for the weekend.… I figured, “What the hell.”
As Bill argues, drinking is not always planned; alcohol consumption can occur as spontaneously emerging behavior. Thus attention should be paid to the immediately impinging foreground factors that sometimes emerge to produce the decision to drink. University of Houston researchers Avelardo Valdez and Charles Kaplan argue that foreground factors “identify the more particular short-term conditions, situations, and contexts that interact with background factors to bring about specific behaviors.”11 According to Jack Katz, acts of deviance are generally attributed to background factors (e.g., family background; cognitive and personality dimensions; life events), but scant attention is paid to the variables that converge in time and space in the foreground:
Whatever the relevance of antecedent events and contemporaneous social conditions, something causally essential happens in the very moments when a crime is committed. The assailant must sense, then and there, a distinctive construct or seductive appeal that he did not sense before in a substantially similar place.… Thus the central problem is to understand the emergence of distinctive sensual dynamics.12
In other words, there are times when the drinking episode magically materializes under conditions not normally designed for alcoholic consumption. Here, Arthur, a nineteen-year-old freshman, recounts a spontaneous party that emerged while he was studying for a next-day exam:
[T]he other night I was studying with a few friends in the dorms. One kid was writing a paper and the other was studying with me for a test the following day. We all got kind of bored so we began drinking. We got the liquor from a friend who was of legal age. We started out just drinking leisurely, but after a while we began playing some drinking games. We were not really afraid of getting into trouble because it was only a few of us and we weren’t being terribly loud. Also, it was getting kind of late so the chance of bumping into an RA was pretty little. I was not actually intending to get wasted but by the end of the night I was. We basically defended drinking the night before a test by telling ourselves that we had studied a lot and this was our reward. I guess part of the excitement was that we weren’t supposed to be getting drunk right before a test.
Arthur lists several contributing foreground factors to explain the context of his drinking: boredom, a small, quiet drinking contingent, freedom from fear of the local ag
ent of social control (e.g., the resident advisor), and the thrill of transcending the normal boundaries of his role as student (i.e., he was not “supposed to be getting drunk right before a test”). While some alcohol use is normal for most college students, becoming intoxicated when an important class, exam, or assignment is approaching is not. Arthur notes that violating this student role requirement (to approach an exam responsibly) was “part of the excitement” of the episode.
Drinking even though you are “not supposed to” appears to enhance the enjoyment for some college partiers. Anne, a recent abstainer from alcohol, was coaxed into going out on the town by friends. Though she did not plan on becoming intoxicated, a combination of pressure from friends and the fact that her boyfriend was out of town delivered her to the doorstep of “drunkworld.” Here, Anne lets us in on her internal dialogue that night:
I stopped drinking when I got to college because I went through some spiritual changes. But she [her friend] asked me to come to her house and then out to the bars with friends to celebrate her last night here.… My friend asked me if I wanted a lemonade-vodka she made. I quickly said sure. For some reason I actually felt the urge to drink. It had been so long, I thought, and my boyfriend, who would probably stop me, was out of town.
Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard Page 5