Whether you chug 24 cold ones with your pals on Case Day, enjoy a bottle of wine with the girls or walk through The Dive on a Friday night, you have probably caught a whiff of the alcohol culture at Gustavus.
From the administration to students who party three nights a week, members of the Gustavus community have a wide variety of opinions regarding the role of alcohol on campus. Like their beverage choices, Gusties have many different ideas about drinking.
Sophomore Management Major Kenny Latham believes that Gusties who choose to drink do so to be social and have fun with their friends. “I do drink. I choose to drink because it opens up doors to many social situations. The way I like to put it: you don’t necessarily drink to get drunk—you set a night and say I am going to go have [a few] and if you get drunk in the process, so be it.”
The administration, however, has witnessed disturbing trends as a result of alcohol-related behavior on campus. According to Assistant Dean of Students Ruth Johnson, Director of Residential Life Charlie Strey and Director of Safety and Security Ray Thrower, the quantity of alcohol consumed on-campus has increased significantly this year.
Thrower said that Safety and Security has been encountering students with higher Blood Alcohol Levels (BAL) than in previous years. “In the past, if a student blew a .20—that was a pretty intoxicated student. We are starting to see students in this academic year that are blowing .27 or .32. Normally when we see students at that level they are hospital worthy, but these students are walking or talking,” Thrower said. This signifies that some students have been drinking regularly and consistently enough to become a seasoned drinker with a high tolerance level for alcohol.
Junior Sociology and Anthropology Major and Collegiate Fellow Jamie Snyder described a recorded incident of a resident in such a situation. “A girl blew a really high, detox-worthy level….[but] she was completely coherent and her BAL was ridiculous. It is scary…that she drinks so much so often that [she could] rattle off the ABCs and count backwards.”
Strey believes that the hard liquor industry plays a factor in the higher BALs of students by seducing students with flavor. “The hard liquor industry has attempted to seduce people by making everything flavored. We are seeing a lot of people using vanilla Smirnoff [and other], berry-flavored hard alcohol. It is hard alcohol with a flavor to it so it goes down easier. People are drinking 10, 12, 15 shots,” Strey said.
Sophomore History Major Natalie Baker agrees and thinks that females on campus often want to impress boys by drinking large amounts of alcohol. “It’s really scary when a 135 pound girl and a football player go drink for drink with each other as…[a] way of flirting.” According to Baker, a lot of students come to college without having experimented much with drinking. “A lot of students come to college without knowing their limits and just follow what others do.”
Sophomore Psychology Major and Collegiate Fellow Shelly Cooper has witnessed this tendancy in first-year students. She experienced one incident while on-duty with a resident who could not handle the amount she drank. “An ambulance had to come and pick up [the] person. [It] was scary…seeing how gone that person was….She wasn’t coming down and [was] still rising up in her level of drunkenness. I had never seen anyone like that before…It affected her friends. I had to step back and make sure they were okay. The friends were scared and it opened their eyes,” Cooper said.
Junior Accounting and Political Science Major Lucas Ryan experienced detox last year. “I had to pay for.…one night where I happened to drink too much. I wasn’t puking or blacked out. I was coherent. I definitely am a lot more careful. When I started to drink again I did in moderation”
“Detox is a very eye-opening experience. The most common thing I hear from our students [after experiencing detox] is: ‘I am not like them, but if don’t do something different, that is my future.’ And that scares them. Most often a change of behavior occurs for awhile,” Strey said.
Safety and Security Lead Officer Dave Klein explains that S&S worries about the safety of students who drink to the point that they make decisions uncharacteristic of them. “The ones that we are really concerned about are the ones who have gone too far; they can’t handle themselves [and] they are making the wrong decisions,” Klein said. “We have had people who have…cursed us, called us names—just flat out been plain rude. I am absolutely sure that the same person in a completely sober state would not talk to us in that way.”
According to Latham, any school is going to have the occasional student who drinks too much and gets out of control, but for the most part Gustavus students drink responsibly. “Students watch over each other really well at this school,” Latham said. “There have been plenty of nights where we have all been detox-worthy. When we are, we try to be smart about it. Detox is scary, but it is always something we put in the back of [our] heads—a risk we are willing to take.”
According to statistics from the Dean of Students Office there were 21 incidents of students being sent to detox between the beginning of this year and Spring Break, and a total of 114 drinking citations were issued from the beginning of the year through January.
Thrower explained that some students seem to have the mindset that “we study hard and we are going to party hard and we are drinking to get drunk.”
Latham and his friends have developed a system for balancing school and partying. “[My friends and I] drink quite a bit, three days a week, but there are people that do more. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are when the parties are. As it gets closer to finals we take days off here and there. Generally, we put school-work first.”
Johnson understands that college is a time when many students consume alcohol, yet her concerns lie in the future of our students. “There is a belief in the mind of some students that college is the time when you party and that of course you would not conductyourself like that once you are out in the world with a job and many responsibilities. My concern is that some students may be putting themselves on a path biochemically and physiologically that will not allow them to just flip the switch when they take a job and move into a new life. Alcohol addiction may be laid down in their social practice now.”
Klein has concerns as well: “I read and hear a lot of things on the news of other colleges [that] have had people who have died. It’s probably, for us, a matter of time before we see it. And I hope I am not [the one] who will have to take care of that call.”
Strey believes that society itself has a problem that manifests itself on college campuses. “This age group of people is on the cusp of becoming independent, so they are trying to make independent decisions—or what are being toted as adult decisions and alcohol is one of them. Unfortunately, society itself says ‘these are the best years of your life’ and the alcohol companies say this is all a part of it, and your college experience needs to include this to be a full college experience,” Strey said.
Ryan believes that regardless of the academic institution, students are going to drink, and the problem is not just specific to Gustavus—it’s a nation-wide problem. “If you are getting hundreds, thousands of kids together, people are going to drink,” Ryan said. Baker agrees and thinks that students commonly drink because they are not coming up with other creative activities. “People aren’t trying hard enough to make their own fun apart from drinking, and it becomes the default activity,” she said.
Snyder concurred that those who choose to drink are going to drink, but she is also very impressed with the stability of the PLEDGE Program, Gustavus’s substance-free housing program, on campus as well as the number of students who make the decision not to drink. Snyder, who participated in PLEDGE her first year on campus, said, “I found this awesome community with these amazing girls and alcohol wasn’t a part of it at all, and it was the best year I had here,” Snyder said. “I was shocked. Not only did I come into a whole section that was sub free, but a whole tower and there is a whole upper classman building (Prairie View). Then there are also the people that don’t drink that don’t elect to live in PLEDGE. I was surprised and really excited that all these other people enjoy a sub-free life. Drinking isn’t the only thing in college, and if you look you can find other people that don’t.”
And for those Gusties who do choose to drink, like Latham and his friends, they are just going to keep partying. “We like to celebrate a lot of different things—birthdays we get way out of control. My birthday this year we celebrated for an entire weekend. Case Day is very big. If we all have big tests on Friday, we start drinking to celebrate them being over with. We always find reasons to celebrate.”
Alcohol is certainly present on campus, and it is how Gustavus students choose to handle it that determines what kind of role it plays in their college experience.