Nicole Robinson

Much has been made of alcohol’s place in student culture.

At St. Cloud State University (Minn.), police arrested students for drinking-related violations. St. Cloud State spokesman Loren Boone explained, “We are trying to change the culture.”

At UW-Eau Claire, a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education has been designated for the same purpose. Over the next two years, students, administrators and faculty will use the funds in projects aimed at reducing underage and high-risk drinking. The money will pay for increased University Police staff hours, public awareness marketing campaigns and the newly established Center for Alcohol Studies and Education.

As a demographic region, we drink a lot of alcohol. Wisconsin students binge drink more than those in any of the 40 states studied in the Harvard research cited in the grant. The 2004 Core Alcohol and Drug Survey found that 57.6 percent of students reported binge drinking in the past two weeks. Less than a tenth reported consuming no alcohol in the past year.

Nearly half reported public misconduct as a result of drinking or drug use, and 27.8 percent reported serious personal problems such as physical injury, suicidal thoughts, sexual assault or inability to stop drinking.

Across the Midwest, students have disappeared after drinking and later been found dead. I knew one of them.

Can changing the culture of college drinking be accomplished with conscious effort and bucket-loads of cash? Does one group even have the right to try to change another’s culture? We do have serious problems – but I think it will be impossible to fix them without understanding where they came from.

As far as I remember, I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol in high school. If Wisconsin is the land of beer and cheese, my homestead up north should have been evicted. My parents drank so little that drinking was foreign to me. It’s not so much that I was an intentional teetotaler; I just didn’t have any particular desire to do it.

So, like many students, I learned about alcohol from my college peers. I’ve kept it pretty tame, relatively speaking, and the traumatic things I’ve done at college have been while completely sober. But now that I can order “the usual” at the Joynt, I think I might know a thing or two about the culture of college drinking.

It is part of our culture. There are all kinds of social rituals we perform with glass in hand, such as going out for a drink to mark the end of a rough day at work or buying someone a drink to signify goodwill or reconciliation. For college students, it can also be a celebration of independence and adulthood.

Alcohol reduces inhibitions. Students under the influence can find themselves saying what they really mean and doing things they might be too afraid to do sober. Sometimes the consequences are harmful; sometimes they’re not – but living without hesitation can feel awfully good.

Why do college students binge drink? I can’t speak for everyone, but I think it has something to do with the enduring human affection for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

We want to feel alive. But aside from cases of alcoholism, what we’re looking for often is not the drug itself. It’s a risky means to a necessary end. We might end up feeling blissful, but sadness, injury and even death also can result.

The drive for this kind of satisfaction is a part of our culture, and no amount of enforcement and awareness campaigns can change that. Efforts to alleviate the heartbreaking consequences of alcohol abuse cannot succeed until they consider why we drink.