Dartmouth's Culture of Drinking

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Friday, November 4, 2005

The debate between college students and administrators regarding the use, dangers, and benefits of alcohol often plays out like a mother and her elementary school child arguing about the child's desire for some superfluous privilege.

"But everybody else is doing it."

"That doesn't make it all right. It's still dangerous."

"It's not that dangerous. Everyone who does it is fine."

And unsurprisingly, the two parties angling for these privileges demand them with strikingly similar standards of maturity. That is to say, the maturity of the aforementioned teeny-bopper. The failure of students—and their allies, for that matter—to put forth a reasonable and defensible justification of mass, ritualistic alcohol consumption forces college administrators to unilaterally institute oft-misguided policies and attack what they perceive to be the root of the problem. Every academic cycle sees a new approach to tackling the supposed scourge of heavy drinking only to see it fail spectacularly. Obviously something is not working. So maybe the uppity youngsters have a point; what if everyone else really is doing it? What if it's really not so bad?

Unfortunately, it is more than a simple matter of not seeing eye to eye on the issue; despite claims that heavy drinking is deeply ingrained in the institutional culture of Dartmouth and other colleges and universities, there has been no data to support them. An enlightening and groundbreaking article published this past February by Dartmouth Professor of Anthropology Hoyt Alverson may change this belief. Alverson's study, "Students' Social Life at Dartmouth College: Reflections in Their Looking Glass," is a compilation of anecdotal and observational data collected by thirty-five of his students for a Methods of Ethnographic Field Research seminar. By Alverson's own admission, the findings of the study were initially secondary to both him and the purpose of the course, but soon proved to be highly relevant to current discussion of alcohol and binging on college campuses.

Alverson first frames the survey's findings with existing quantitative data on the same subject. Most notably, campus drinking has held quite constant "over recent years, with no significant trends up or down, likewise for its harmful consequences, which include: death, injury, assault, sexual abuse, unsafe sex, academic problems, suicide attempts, drunk driving, vandalism, property damage, and police involvement." While this initial analysis is rather morbid, it sets up a main tenet of the paper: studies of alcohol are always measured in terms of negative consequences, with little or no regard for any potential benefits. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) published similar statistics in 2002, reporting that 44% of college students engage in binge drinking, a number comparable to those measured annually since the early 1980s. "Interestingly," Alverson notes here, "Dartmouth students find utterly ludicrous the criterion for binging of 'four or five drinks in a sitting,' insisting instead that one must consume at least ten drinks in a single sitting to be binging."

The study takes fault with the NIAAA's proposed prescription, which is to change the culture of college drinking. Alverson bemoans the organization's narrow definition of "culture," believing that it focuses too exclusively on drinking, while ignoring those actions and ideas to "which drinking is indissolubly bound up � the forming of friendships, competing, blowing off steam, chilling, partying, clowning, raging, "hooking up," fitting in, and getting ahead amongst one's peers." And more distressingly, Alverson discovered that nearly all previous scientific studies on student drinking were devoid of any student discourse.

The bulk of the study comprises case studies collected and reported by Alverson's students, each detailing the drinking experiences of a certain demographic within Dartmouth. For those who have lived the Dartmouth experience, there are few insightful or original observations to be found within these sections; they are all experiences that students take for granted, on the blind assumption that those who are not their peers understand the culture equally well. The accounts at times almost seem to be generic, stereotypical reconstructions—the freshman suffering from "let off the leash syndrome" and eager to show everyone how much he can drink; sophomores and juniors who prefer alcohol-fueled, short-term romantic dalliances because of inconveniences of the D-Plan; and sophomore men who pledge fraternities to gain "access to women and control of beer."

Alverson even delves into the minutiae of the fraternity social scene, explaining the unspoken protocols for serving beer (brothers first, then friends of brothers, then freshman girls), public urination (generally fine in your own house), and Greeks' fascination with vomiting on each other (highly encouraged). An extensive discussion of pong analyzes the three most-cited functions which the game serves:

a) an important outlet for competition, allowing students to prove their abilities and also gain recognition among their peers b) allows students to "hang out" and spend what they perceive to be quality time with friends. In addition, pong games permit students to meet new people and develop a "network of acquaintances" c) facilitates interaction between members of the opposite sex and helps students connect with prospective sexual partners.

While this may hardly seem reason enough to allay the fears of tuition-paying parents, Alverson's extensive discussion of the sport portrays it as anything but a means for getting drunk. Further discussions of drinking in other scenarios are equally old-hat for Dartmouth students, but are significant in that they had never been scientifically observed before. Among these were pre-gaming rituals in dorms, the proper rotation when smoking marijuana, sports team drinking sessions, and drinking within other student organizations.

In his analysis, Alverson comes down squarely on the side of the students who all along had been insisting, "Yes, everyone does it." While he certainly does not ignore the dangers of ritual drinking, he does conclude that "There is no culture of drinking, an more than a culture of hanging out, competing, blowing off steam, or getting laid."

Among its "high-value payoffs for students: hanging out, meeting new people, demonstrating athletic prowess, affirming or creating social bonds, overcoming reserve or shyness, fitting in and getting ahead amongst peers, overcoming gender stereotypes, flouting societal norms, raging, and having one hell of a lot of fun." In short, alcohol is a means to an end, and not the end in itself. It is "a sacrament in the black (carnival) mass. Take away the liquor and out goes the carnival."It is precisely these benefits of Dartmouth's drinking culture that SLI-happy administrators have been ignorant of in recent years. Alverson does not vouch for the safety of such drinking habits, but he ultimately concludes from his data what Dartmouth students have been insisting for years:

"To change students' "drinking behavior" is to change culture. In the end this means either (1) employing overwhelming force to banish alcohol entirely from campus environments, or (2) providing facilities, spaces, programming, and an ideology of student "ownership" of their activities, in which most or all of the positive, diverse, and rewarding social functions and payoffs of ritual heavy drinking occasions are fully served and replaced by other forms of social action."

However, neither of those options sounds quite as palatable as, say, fifteen lukewarm Keystones poured into twenty-two cups.

Dartmouth's Culture of Drinking

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