Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard

by Thomas Vander Ven

A: Well, I just didn’t want to deal with it, so I opted to walk home… just ’cause I don’t want to deal with it. “Fine, if you want to go with your friends just go.” You know?

  Q: Right, these are fights that you normally wouldn’t get into?

  A: Yeah, I mean I’d still get annoyed but I wouldn’t take it to the point where I would just leave and walk home, especially if I’m drunk.

  Christine exhibits an acute self-awareness of the kind of person she becomes when she becomes intoxicated and how her transformation often leads to conflict with her boyfriend. This phenomenon—the routine argumentation that occurs between couples—was reported several times by my respondents. The following informant, Olivia, claims that a typical drinking episode with her boyfriend ends with him acting irrationally and with her having hurt feelings:

  My boyfriend was really drunk that night and was upset at me, for something that if he was sober wouldn’t have been a big deal AT ALL. So it caused me to have a TERRIBLE night sleep, migraine in the morning and hurt feelings (Olivia, nineteen-year-old female)

  Like Christine and Olivia, the following male informant suggests that verbal confrontations with his girlfriend are a fairly predictable occurrence during a drinking episode:

  The following morning was rough. I had a massive headache and felt like shit all day. Was it worth the price on Sunday? I think so because we had such a good time the night before. I think it did affect my other activities on Sunday because I had to study and did, but not as much as I planned on the day before. This episode did not have an effect on my relationship, however usually when we drink together, we get into fights [i.e., arguments] the remainder of the night. (twenty-two-year-old male)

  Though intoxicated conflicts appear to be common, most college drinkers do not have to deal with their misery alone. Often, temporarily despondent members of the party scene receive drunken counseling from their friends, roommates, and drinking partners. The following story describes a young woman who is escorted home by her friend after a relational spat and then receives some brief therapy at home from a roommate:

  My boyfriend called and was mad that I didn’t call him back. He was out drinking with his friends and didn’t call me until 1:30 A.M. but I was supposed to be cool with that. We got into a huge fight and almost broke up… he didn’t want to see me because he was mad. After I got off the phone with him my friend walked me home because I was crying.… I went home and ate some of my pita. I was sitting on the couch alone when my roommate came in at 3:30 A.M. She listened to my story and comforted me. (twenty-one-year-old female)

  Similarly, this respondent receives support from several concerned dorm mates during a hostile display by an ex-boyfriend:

  My ex-boyfriend was drunk and banging on my dorm room door. About 5 of my friends tried to calm him down and get him to leave while a neighbor called the police. I was not drinking but a friend inside the room with me comforted me. (twenty-year-old female)

  Intoxicated relational conflicts are not limited to romantic partners. Drunken arguments are common among roommates and friends as well. Finding ways to reconcile these differences provides an opportunity to practice and exercise problem-solving skills. Here, a twenty-one-year-old female describes a fight with her drinking partner:

  However, all the fun did later turn to a more negative situation once we began to walk home from the bars after about 5 hours of drinking. My roommate and I got into an argument about something very silly that we would normally have never fought about. Because each of us were not using our best judgment due to the influence of alcohol we said things to each other, and we were hurtful and mean when we didn’t mean to be. Alcohol made my roommate’s emotions more sensitive because she was crying over the little argument we all had, which was not anything she would ever cry about when she was sober.

  In this case, all was well the next morning. The roommates were able to reconcile their differences—the two combatants had a common problem that they worked through together: “The next morning the consequences were a very large hangover that we each treated with Tylenol and water. We had no memories of the fight the night before, and did not remember my roommates and I coming home. We were ok with each other after that.” The fighting roommates were able to get past the crisis in their friendship by medicating their hangovers together and by agreeing that they could not even remember the difficulties of the night before. Whether or not the events of the night before were truly lost to them, they successfully managed the problem by defining it as lost. Verbal conflict is a common drinking crisis reported by respondents. But as with vomiting, the aggrieved drinker may not have to weather the storm alone. Seemingly nonsensical issues raised by one drinker may be taken up by a cohort and given legitimacy. Here, a twenty-one-year-old female is expelled from a car for singing:

  We got in our friend’s car and on the way home my friend’s ex-boyfriend started yelling at us (I guess he didn’t like our singing). He pulled the car over and told us if we didn’t be quiet we would have to walk. So I just got out of the car and started walking. My friend and the driver got out to get me and my friend and I began yelling at the driver. I guess we were being so loud someone called the police. When the police arrived they told us to go home. I began yelling and my friend did too. The police officer looked at my friend and said, “Don’t say a word.” She looked at him and said, “One word.” I thought for sure she would get arrested but she did not.

  This account may become an important war story in the history of these two friends. The argument itself had little substance, but the act of support may have a long-lasting effect. Intoxicated conflicts, then, may have the unintended effect of bringing some people closer together. Thus social bonds can be created, reproduced, and strengthened when drinking partners stick up for each other when the social order unravels during a drinking episode. This same argument can be applied to the acts of physical violence that emerge during collective intoxication. Drunk fighting—one measurable sign of the social disorder that accompanies heavy college drinking—can be seen as an indicator of the solidarity and closeness that some drinking partners feel for one another. Drunken brawls sometimes emerge and escalate because codrinkers feel the need to support one another when threats, minor slights, or acts of disrespect are displayed. In short, many intoxicated fistfights represent the “dark side” of drunk support.

  “I Got Your Back”: Intoxication, Fistfighting, and Social Support

  The college drinking scene can be a dangerous place. While most of the high-profile, tragic stories about “drinking-related” deaths and injuries involve self-inflicted harm (e.g., fatal alcohol poisoning), heavy drinkers inflict damage on others as well. According to sociologist George Dowdall, researchers have demonstrated that over a typical year, scores of college students are assaulted by other students who have been drinking.23 Furthermore, on the basis of their analysis of a nationally representative sample, Wechsler and Wuethrich found that 11 percent of non–binge drinking students reported being pushed, hit, or assaulted by others while at school. While informative, these data tell just part of the story. Figures like those stated above divorce the drinking-violence relationship from its social context. Most assaults, that is, cannot be fairly characterized as a random attack of a drunken student on a sober one. Wechsler and Wuethrich hint at this when they state that “heavy drinkers were themselves more likely to be victimized by a fellow intoxicated student.”24 Thus it is more likely that most “alcohol-related assaults” are the product of a physical confrontation between two intoxicated aggressors. Though some acts of drunken victimization may be unprovoked, it is likely that inebriated students usually work together to set the conditions for physical confrontation. Furthermore, many of the injuries associated with intoxicated fighting result from interested bystanders jumping into the fray. Before we get to student accounts of the social nature of drunken fighting, let’s explore a neglected topic. Specifically, why do drunken students fight?

  Why Do College D
rinkers Fight?

  First of all, according to my respondents, most intoxicated fistfights involve male combatants. Stephen, a twenty-three-year-old male, discusses his perceptions about why drinkers fight and weighs in on the gendered nature of intoxicated conflict:

  Q: Do you ever get into fights when you are drinking?

  A: I don’t personally, I mean I have friends that do, I would rather avoid it and have a good time.

  Q: What do people fight about when they are drinking?

  A: It varies, probably most times it’s somebody saying something to another group of people, saying something about a girl they are with or something they are wearing just trying to be funny and macho, make fun of somebody else, laugh at their expense, and then people just start talking smack to each other, that is how most of them start I think.

  Q: And you have been around that sort of thing before?

  A: Yeah, I have seen that stuff happen.

  Q: Does it escalate into a fight or is it more people getting in each other’s faces?

  A: Usually most people want to show that they are willing to fight. Like, they want to show that they won’t back down. They may not actually throw a punch but they want to show that they will if they have to. It’s a male thing in that way, I guess.

  Q: How about females, have you ever seen a female fight physically?

  A: Oh yeah.

  Q: On campus?

  A: I don’t really remember anytime on campus, I mean I have seen girls yell at each other on campus, I have never see them physically fight on campus.

  Q: So when you see girls fight, can you think of some of the reasons girls might get into an argument?

  A: Sometimes it will be over a guy or something like that, and “you used to be my best friend now you are a backstabbing bitch, blah blah,” and I don’t understand that, I mean I have gotten in fights with my friends but [with women] it’s like “we used to be good friends” stuff, it’s like “you didn’t do the dishes.”

  Similarly, this twenty-one-year-old female respondent sees drunken aggression as more of a male phenomenon:

  Q: Do females and males act differently when they are drunk?

  A: Yeah

  Q: Okay, how?

  A: Sometimes I have noticed that guys can get angry, like angry yelling mad drunk, and I have never seen a girl, unprovoked, I mean, I have seen guys get angry drunk for no reason at all.

  Q: And physically fight?

  A: Physically fight, yell at people, yell at girls, yell at whoever and not in a joking way.

  Q: And how about women. What do they do?

  A: I would think that women are passive drunks for the most part. We just sit around and talk, you know, a lot of girls get flirtatious when they are drunk, for sure, but for the most part girls go their own way and guys are rambunctious and wild and crazy.

  Intoxicated fighting on campus may, in fact, be mostly a “male thing.” This might suggest that fighting is just one effective way to demonstrate masculinity to one’s audience. It doesn’t, however, explain the link between alcohol and increased aggression. According to college drinking researchers Wechsler and Wuethrich, the alcohol-violence relationship may be explained by the ways in which alcohol alters brain activity:

  Alcohol may also affect the brain in such a way that it reduces a person’s ability to reason abstractly or to psychologically cope with different situations. In narrowing a person’s perceptions, it paves the way to misinterpretations of other people’s words and actions, sometimes prompting violent reactions. Evidence also exists for alcohol-induced chemical changes in the brain that encourage violence, particularly in men. These changes can increase the amount of testosterone, which increases aggression, and reduce the amount of serotonin, which lowers inhibitions.25

  My respondents might agree with this analysis but use plainer language to capture some of the same concepts. Mark, a twenty-three-year-old college drinker, has been in his fair share of fights. According to him, there is no real way to make sense of the fighting that occurs at the bars, dorms, and house parties on campus. What Mark acknowledges that many college drinking researchers do not, however, is that drunk fighting is socially textured and socially produced. The intoxicated argument often escalates into a fight because of the influence of audience participation:

  Why do people fight? It’s just being drunk and stupid. When some guys drink they just want to start talking shit, you know? They start talking shit and then someone says, “Are you going to let him talk that shit to you?” and then both of them are going to have to fight to show everyone that they aren’t weak or scared or whatever. So that’s how a lot of it starts.

  As Mark suggests, the drunken fight is a forum for demonstrating one’s character. When a student is unwilling to let someone “talk shit” to him, it is an effective way to display masculinity by publicly rejecting the perception that he is “weak or scared.” Emerging male adults may be particularly vulnerable to this sort of prodding by a social audience because they are residing in a unique period of maturational development. Caught in between the dependence of adolescence and the full-blown social maturity of adulthood, college males may feel more compelled to make strong public identity statements about “who they are.”26 The drunken fight in college must be seen in this context because it is occurring within a unique social space inhabited by emerging adults who may feel an amplified pressure to demonstrate adult competence.

  Sociologist Erving Goffman argued that certain high-risk or “fateful” activities are appealing to men for these reasons. A public confrontation is a good opportunity for one to showcase character by demonstrating the ability to rise and meet the challenge of a consequential, adult conflict. And for college students, a physical confrontation may allow emerging adults to demonstrate socially valued attributes like “heart,” “courage,” and “gallantry.” According to Goffman,

  These capacities (or lack of them) for standing correct and steady in the face of sudden pressures are crucial; they do not specify the activity of the individual, but how he will manage himself in this activity. I will refer to these maintenance properties as an aspect of the individual’s character. Evidence of incapacity to behave effectively and correctly under the stress of fatefulness is a sign of weak character.27

  Though a college student might display these attributes by fighting, he also might display them by showing that he is willing to stick up for a friend when trouble arises. He must show that he will be loyal and willing to subject himself to harm in order to look out for the interests of the members of his social circle. This willingness to fight to support a friend at risk is known as “getting your back.” For example, one might say, “If you get into a fight tonight, I got your back.” Mark explains:

  Ok, here’s one. Kyle got punched in the face by some random guy who was just fucked up. That’s all I can say. That’s all you need to say. Kyle was drunk too and the other guy was just walking past him uptown. The other guy was wearing a tie and Kyle goes, “Nice tie!” And then the guy just jacks him in the face and then pushed him to the ground. The guy was probably just looking to get into a fight and that’s all that it took. So then I had to get involved of course. You can’t let your friend just get beaten on like that. So I don’t know what I did exactly and the guy hits me then. I had to go to a job fair the next week with a black eye.

  Similarly, Ryan feels compelled to protect his friend when a drunken student publicly disrespects him:

  People like to throw shit when they’ve been drinking. They’ll throw beer or beer bottles or water balloons or just spit beer. I don’t know. They just throw shit. They can’t help it.… At Range Fest [a student block party] we were just walking down the street and a guy throws a water balloon right in my friend’s face. It probably wasn’t filled with water or could have been piss or beer.… We were like “what the hell?” So we confronted them and then the one guy punches my other friend. It’s sort of like, and I know this might sound bad but you know “that�
�s my boy or whatever so I can’t let you do that.” So then I was fighting too and it got pretty bad before it broke up. (Ryan, twenty-one-year-old male)

  Earlier in the chapter, Katie described her role as “babysitter” to an overserved friend as a “job.” Some college drinkers assume a fairly stable role that they serve whenever their drinking group convenes. One such role is that of protector. The protector is there to intervene whenever disagreements develop into physical conflicts. Tyler, a twenty-one-year-old male, occupies this role for his friendship circle. And while he finds the role tiresome, he is compelled to meet the social expectations of his identity:

  Q: So have you seen fights break out at the bars?

  A: Yeah.

  Q: Can you think of an example?

  A: People get too drunk and masculinity takes over. My friends are bad about picking fights and I have had to talk to them about it; they rely on me to defend them and I just get real tired of getting into fights for them.

  Q: Can you give us an example of a time that happened, like why it happened and what happened?

  A: One of my friends was talking to a girl and he must have said something wrong and I didn’t realize it, and we were standing there and the girl’s friend comes over and starts bitching us out and asking us why (she came to me actually and asked why) I said something disrespectful to her, and I just backed down. I’ll give an apology, I don’t care. I didn’t say anything, but whatever you want me to apologize to… she was just drunk and I didn’t want to deal with it. And then her boyfriend came over and my friend started pushing him around. He does this quite a bit. I have a martial arts background and he likes to rely on that, because he knows I will defend him if I have to. And so I ended up taking this guy outside and, you know, “having a talk with him.” I would say it happens once every two months, one of them gets into a fight.