Beer and Circus

by Murray Sperber

  Ernest Boyer, the head of the Carnegie Foundation, commented on “the cynicism that stems from the abuses in athletics” in College (op. cit.), p. 184. The comment about Peter Warrick’s involvement in a shoplifting incident came from a student at the University of Georgia, 11/19/99. IU student Andy Short suggested the survey question to probe the connections between student cheating and college sports, 2/20/94; and the U.S. News poll statistic of 18 percent on turning in a classmate was on the magazine website, 11/15/99. The respondents quoted at length in the text on helping the athlete cheat were a freshman female at Illinois: “I would help the athlete prepare”; a Tulane senior male intercollegiate athlete: “I’d tell him to eat shit”; a junior female at Ohio State: “It would be a total mess”; and a sophomore woman at Temple University: “No help for this pathetic moron from me.”

  In the ongoing debate as to whether intercollegiate athletes gain meaningful university educations, many observers note the higher graduation rates for female athletes than for their male counterparts. The reason is obvious: female athletes, less burdened by the fantasy of playing pro sports, place a higher value on their free educations and try to beat the training system to obtain them. The further away the female athlete is from a pro sports career, the higher the grad rate; as a result, women basketball players have the lowest grad rates for female athletes, and field hockey players have very high rates. Whether the female grad rates will erode as professional women’s sports expands is an open question.

  13: Undergraduate Education Triage: Honors Program Lifeboats

  The quote from Dr. Joan Digby, editor of Peterson’s Honors Programs (Princeton, N.J., 1997), is on p. 2 of that book; the comments about honors classes at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) is in the 2000 edition of the Insider’s Guide to the Colleges (op. cit.); the description of Miami University of Ohio’s honors program is in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), p. 203; and the comments on the University of Maryland (College Park) honors program are on the university’s website, honors program section. The University of Connecticut describes its honors program in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), pp. 332-34; the 2000 edition of U.S. News’s college issue profiled the honors freshman at UConn; and the 2000 edition of the Insider’s Guide (op. cit.) had the comments on UConn, “well known as a party school.” The University of Oregon’s honors program pitch is in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), p. 376.

  Michael Hill’s article about the University of Maryland honors program appeared in the Baltimore Sun, 2/22/99; Kate Zernike’s article about the UMass (Amherst) honors program was in the Boston Globe, 1/6/99; Arthur M. Cohen, in Shaping of American Higher Education, noted that “the bright students better fit the faculty ideal,” p. 222. UMass freshman Thu Mai commented on class size in the Boston Globe, 12/6/98; she graduated from St. Clare Academy in Boston, a school with a total student population of 200. UMass student John Goodwin complained about the school using undergraduate teaching assistants in a Boston Globe article by Alice Dembner, 1/20/97; UMass Psychology Department chair Melinda Novak explained her position in the same article.

  UMass student Timothy Dalton wrote the Boston Globe about the “elitist ideology of Commonwealth College,” 1/21/99; columnist Joan Vennochi of that paper argued that the UMass honors college is “about image,” 1/19/99. The Boyer Commission report Reinventing Undergraduate Education (op. cit.) commented on how “universities take great pleasure,” p. 7. The University of Texas at Austin is so large that it has a number of honors programs, some based on major fields such as business and engineering, and some interdisciplinary ones, such as Plan II. The New York Times discussed the new scholarships in a front-page article by Ethan Bronner, 6/21/98; and Kate Zernike of the Boston Globe wrote about UMass and other “second-tier schools … offering similar scholarships,” 5/20/99. Mike Dodd of USA Today reported on the UMass “out-of-state applications increase,” 7/17/97; the Boston Globe covered the UMass men’s basketball GPA scandal thoroughly, including a staff article revealing each player’s GPA, 10/19/94. Paul Sullivan of the Boston Herald reported on the snowball pelting by UMass students of nearby Amherst College and quoted the UMass student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, 12/13/96. Carla Haworth of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the UMass student “Save our Beer” campaign, 10/31/97.

  Temple University described its honors program in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), pp. 305-6; the Boyer Commission report Reinventing Undergraduate Education (op. cit.) complained about “an advertising practice,” pp. 5—6. Temple has earned the dubious distinction of being on Princeton Review’s list of schools with the “least happy students”—originally just “unhappy students”—for every year from 1993 to 2000—in other words, every year that the guidebook has published this list.

  The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee discussed the foundation grant for its honors program in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), p. 404; Richard Moll in The Public Ivys: A Guide to America’s Best Public Undergraduate Colleges and Universities (New York, 1985), quoted the director of the honors program at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) but never gave her name, p. 97. An honors program instructor at Indiana University, Bloomington, used the wrestling metaphor in an interview, 9/10/99; he asked to speak off the record because “I don’t think that it’s very politic at IU to publicly criticize the regular students and the lecture system.” Melinda Moore was the high school senior on a college-visiting trip to the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; I happened to interview her while on campus there, 11/11/98.

  The U.S. News cover story on student cheating (op. cit.) quoted Professor Robert Corless of the University of Western Ontario on helping the “genuine learners catch fire,” 11/22/99. The University of Maryland honors program brags about its faculty on its website; see the section, “What’s So Special about Honors?” The honors program professor who discussed his students doing “scut work” and the one who has his students “digging into databases for references for my projects and grant applications” spoke strictly off the record; they indicated that they were violating the terms of their research grants by using students in this way, and they had no intention of, as one said, “announcing this fact publicly.”

  Commonwealth College at UMass boasts of its honors research opportunities on its website; see the section “Independent Study & Research.” The quote about “the opportunity [for faculty] to teach bright students” in Indiana University’s honors program is in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), pp. 154—55; it should be noted that the entrance requirements for this honors program are much less rigid than most others, and that regular students have much greater access to its courses than at any other school where I did research for this book. Unfortunately, the IU honors program has not helped regular undergraduate education at the school, but has impacted it negatively in the ways described in the text.

  The description of Clemson University’s Calhoun College is in Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.), pp. 78-79; the details on “Holmes Hall” are from the Insider’s Guide (op. cit.), 2000 edition. The quote from Peterson’s Honors Programs (op. cit.) about “centers or lounges” is on p. 3. The honors student at the University of Texas at Austin made her comment in an on-campus interview, 11/24/98; she explained her request to speak off the record: “The director of Plan I, the program I’m in, is very sensitive about the perks we receive, and would not appreciate seeing my name in your book on this topic.” The comments on the University of Iowa’s “Unified Program” were in Insider’s Guide (op. cit.), 1999 edition; the interviews with the non-honors undergraduates occurred on campus, 10/21/99; the interviews with the honors student were on campus, 5/27/99; I spoke to them after they filled out the questionnaire for this book and, because of the anonymity of the survey, I did not ask their names.

  A University of Maryland honors student told Michael Hill of the Baltimore Sun about the studying and partying habits in her honors dorm, 2/17/99. The Colleg
e Guide for Academically Talented Students is published in Durham, N.C.; the quotes in the text about Michigan State are from the 1997 edition, p. 47; the Insider’s Guide comments on MSU are in the 2000 edition. David Hall and Mike Hudson of the MSU student newspaper explained the history of the Munn Field riots, 8/17/98; the AP carried stories on the major MSU riot, 5/3-4/98 (no authors given); Barbara Yost of the Arizona Republic compared the “Right to Party” protests to those of the 1960s in a column circulated by the Chicago Tribune syndicate, 5/12/98; Michelle Boorstein of the Newark Star-Ledger detailed the effect of the “Right to Party” movement on other campuses, 5/31/98; and Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic on the movement appeared 8/16/98. Kit Lively of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Michigan State led the nation for campus alcohol violations 3/21/97 and 5/8/98 (MSU was first for two straight years); Julie L. Nicklin of that journal reported another number-one finish for MSU in this category—although the arrest total dropped somewhat and school administrators were declaring victory, 5/28/99. The AP carried the story on the death of the MSU undergraduate from an alcohol overdose, 11/7/98; and columnist Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times wrote about Michigan State, 4/11/99.

  In doing research for the sections of this chapter on UMass (Amherst), I e-mailed questions to administrators of the school, as well as to some faculty members with whom I am acquainted. My questions were never answered. I then asked the influential professor, Andrew Zimbalist, at nearby Smith College, to help me, and he tried. All to no avail. At that point, I turned to the public record, following the adage of the great newspaperman I. F. Stone, that everything you ever want to know is on the public record; today, computer databases greatly simplify the task of finding information. The public record on UMass is full and rich—the Boston Globe, among other newspapers, follows the school closely. Therefore, the quotes and facts about UMass are from the public record; I have used only the most pertinent ones for this chapter, but the interested reader can find the full record on UMass in the databases, particularly Lexis-Nexis and Dow Jones.

  14: Cheap Beer: The Oxygen of the Greek System

  The chapter title is from a line in an article in the New Orleans Times Picayune, “A Drier Rush at LSU,” 8/8/98; the story did not have a byline and began, “Generations of college students have made a fetish of alcohol consumption, and cheap beer is the oxygen of the Greek system.” The Animal House review is at http://us.imdb.com. An unsigned editorial in the Durham Herald-Sun termed Animal House “a defining moment,” 9/27/96; Patrick Healy in the Chronicle of Higher Education quoted Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura’s comments about the film, 5/4/99; Lynn Franey and Diane Carroll of the Kansas City Star examined the party scene in their region, 9/30/97, and Mike Hendricks of that newspaper quoted the KU internal poll, 11/13/98. The Insider’s Guide (op. cit.), 1999 edition, described the K State “Patty Murphy” party.

  Linda Temple of USA Today did the feature on college drinking, and quoted a Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo student about “people drinking on the porch of the president’s house,” as well as the University of Mississippi student about slide shows of past parties. The Insider’s Guide (op. cit.) had the “Party, Party, Party,” section in its 1999 and 2000 edition, including the story that “husbands bring their wives.” The studies on alcohol consumption by Greek organization members are cited below; all of the studies that link Greeks, binge-drinking, and big-time college sports programs are discussed in the notes to chapter 16; the main citations are to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Week, 11/18/96; Last Call, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (op. cit.); and the ongoing Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study. Dr. Henry Wechsler runs this study and his major and most accessible statement on it is his article, “Alcohol and the American College Campus: A Report from the Harvard School of Public Health,” Change magazine, July/August 1996, pp. 20-26, 60-61.

  Simon Bronner (op. cit.) wrote about popular drinking games, p. 123. The Complete Book of Beer Drinking Games was written by Andy Griscom, Ben Rand, and Scott Johnston, and published in Memphis (TN); the citation for the “beery evening” and “angry letters” are on p. 11 of the 1994 edition. Many books give the “bring out that old silver goblet” verse, but folklorist Simon Bronner (op. cit.) offers the most definitive version, p. 140. The Houston Chronicle ran the unsigned “SIGMA DIE” article, 8/30/97; Barb Albert, the excellent education writer on the Indianapolis Star, did the piece on the IU student’s death, 12/16/98; Claudia Kalb and John McCormick wrote the Newsweek cover story on college drinking, 9/21/98.

  Henry Wechsler of Harvard announced his latest research on the increase in binge drinking in March 2000; Ben Gose wrote about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/15/00. Raymond A. Scroth described his work in an article, “Brotherhoods of Death: College Fraternities and Binge Drinking,” America, 10/18/97, pp. 6-10. The woman at the University of Washington wrote her long P.S. to the survey on the web for this book, 8/8/99; Ben Peled, student columnist for the Indiana [University] Daily Student, glimpsed the non-alcoholic future at his school, 5/29/97. Last Call, the Center for Science in the Public Interest booklet (op. cit.), has the “Binge drinking is not evenly distributed” quote and the statistics following it on p. 1.

  The Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study run by Dr. Henry Wechsler and also the Center for Science in the Public Interest study announced the over 80 percent college student alcohol consumption rate, see Last Call (op. cit.), p. 1; they also wrote about High Binge and Low Binge schools, and the higher rate of bingeing among Greeks than non-Greeks, and at universities with big-time intercollegiate athletics programs throughout their work. Because only a small percentage of the undergraduate population totally abstains—often for religious reasons—this cohort does not provide critical information about solving the binge-drinking problem. Arthur Levine, in When Hope and Fear Collide (op. cit.), also wrote about the High Binge/Low Binge distinction, and quoted an unnamed dean at the University of Colorado at Boulder, p. 107.

  In 1997, various studies put the college student alcohol consumption cost at $55 million a year, including fifty-five six-packs per student; see Scott Baldauf’s article on this in the Christian Science Monitor, 10/2/97, and Joanna Coles in the Guardian of London, England, 9/13/97. Extrapolating the rate of increase for the three years before 1996 (the year reported in the studies) to the year 2000, $6 billion and sixty six-packs is a very conservative estimate.

  Ed Carson, in his article, “Purging Bingeing: Drinking, Alcohol, and College Students,” Reason magazine, December 1995, quoted David Hanson. Many excellent academic schools also have a binge-drinking scene on the weekends; Rice University is a good example, and students love their weekends as well as their “Beer Bike” festival every spring—drinking at Rice is described in the Insider’s Guide, 2000 edition. The AP reported a Michigan study comparing the binge-drinking habits of students versus non-students, 5/3/99; the unnamed author quoted William Sederberg, president of Ferris State University, about the implications of the study. Dr. Henry Wechsler published his comments on binge drinking by members of Greek organizations, and the difficulties in curtailing their drinking traditions in an op-ed article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking,” 11/20/98; Leo Reisberg of that publication discussed the current state of fraternity houses and moving “the parties off-campus,” 1/7/00. The interview with the University of Kentucky official took place in Lexington 11/15/99; the official requested anonymity, “Hey, the Lexington Herald-Leader is always quoting you [the interviewer] criticizing our athletic department. I don’t mind talking to you, just don’t tell anyone that I did.”

  The 1998 study on binge drinking by Greek leaders is “Alcohol Use in the Greek System: Follow the Leader?” by Jeffrey R. Cashin, Cheryl A. Presley, and Philip W. Meilman, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, January 1998, pp. 63—83. Ron French, Jodi S. Cohen, and Wendy Case wrote the story about the woman at Scorekeepers bar for t
he Detroit News, 1/4/99; Susan C. Thomson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted Henry Wechsler on the history of college female drinking, 10/20/97. Amy Ringel of Indiana University quoted Lynn Allen Steigerwold about the minimal female drinking in the 1950s and 1960s in an unpublished paper, “Indiana University in the Sixties,” 11/7/94; the “co-ed” who disdained beer was Aneta Wharry, class of 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley, in an interview, 3/15/00.

  Simon Bronner (op. cit.) discussed the effect of drinking games on women, p. 123; the story about the condoms in the Chinese restaurant is in Anne Matthews, Bright College Years (op. cit.), p. 50; Mike Rosen of the Denver Post began his story, “If the legendary Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,” 9/29/95; and Arthur Levine, in When Hope and Fear Collide, discussed the sexual effects of binge drinking, p. 107. The fall 1999 college issue of Rolling Stone appeared 10/14/99, and Evan Wright wrote “Sister Act” about sorority life at Ohio State University, p. 99f. Ed Carson quoted David Hanson on “a get-out-of-jail-free card” in his article, Reason magazine, December 1995. An administrator at Ohio State University commented about “date-rape” in an interview on campus, 11/17/98; he asked to speak off the record because “this subject is the briar patch of university life; if I’m public with you about date rape as the school’s cost of doing business, you can bet that some lawyer for an OSU date-rape victim will use it in a trial someday about the school’s callousness.”

  The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Last Call (op. cit.) discussed “student vandalism”; quoted Henry Wechsler on “secondhand binge effects”; and “student willingness” to live in substance-free dorms on pp. 5—6. Matthew Decapua wrote about the false fire alarms in the UConn Daily Campus, 3/10/99; Rick Hampson of USA Today discussed the Seton Hall fire and the false-alarm problem in the dorm there, 1/20/00. Arthur Levine, in When Hope and Fear Collide, discussed the “secondhand alcohol-related” effects of binge drinking, pp. 107—8; John Milne of the Boston Globe reported on student tour guides at the University of Vermont referring to the alcohol-free dorm as “the place where the geeks live,” and quoted UVM official Dennis McBee on student unwillingness to come out of the closet as non-drinkers, 4/2/95. Jennifer A. Galloway of the Madison State Journal quoted the New England Journal of Medicine estimate that 65 percent of UW undergraduates binged, and she discussed the substance-free housing at the school, 11/2/97; Meg Jones of the Milwaukee Sentinel wrote about the drunken student who wedged himself into a small garbage chute in Witte Hall, 11/3/97. Barb Albert of the Indianapolis Star reported on the speech by Myles Brand, president of Indiana University, to the fraternity group, 12/28/97; Eric Nave of the Indiana Daily Student reported on Alpha Sigma Phi’s penalty for repeated alcohol violations, and quoted Jason Boumstein, the chapter’s social chairman, 11/4/99.