“What are you drinking?” I peeled my friend’s fingers back from the tall, colorful can he was holding, expecting to see a Four Loko.
“Arizona tea?” I laughed. Then I pulled him into a game of beer pong with me.
This was at an apartment party a few months ago. It’s a moment I have been ashamed of since that friend gently brought it to my attention a few days later. In that moment, I was pushing a widespread drinking culture that I’ve now started to question. My experience in college has been that, socially, not wanting to party is not OK — and I think that needs to change.
Don’t get me wrong; I love parties. I love meeting new people, I love dancing like an idiot with my friends, I love reminiscing the next morning about all the fun we had the night before.
And then sometimes I don’t want to drink or go out. Which should be fine, but often it’s not.
I acknowledge that partying is part of the culture here in Spain, where dinner time is 10 p.m., pregames start after midnight and cities are famous for their nightclubs. Because I’m an exchange student in Europe, people are confused when they hear I spent a weekend in Barcelona and didn’t go out at night — why I rarely go out at all, wherever I am. I feel a need to defend that choice to everyone who asks how the nightlife was for each city I visited.
But I shouldn’t need to defend my idea that making the most of a weekend in a new city includes getting up early with lots of energy and without a hangover. I know that I might miss a famous landmark if I don’t get there first thing in the morning to beat the lines, and I don’t know how I’d enjoy exploring a city on foot all day if I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. But why should I feel the need to provide these defenses for my decision to stay in at night?
This applies to Chapel Hill, too, because in the same way no one at a party should have to give excuses for choosing not to drink. Maybe you’re a health nut, like me, who hates the thought of the empty calories and toxins in every sip of beer. Maybe your mom was an alcoholic, and you don’t feel like telling that to every person who’s jovially shouting at you to join in on the next round of shots. Maybe you simply can’t afford it.
We don’t put this kind of social pressure on other activities, like watching TV or tossing a Frisbee on the quad. If a friend declines to join a hanging out during the day, no one questions it. Yet somehow it’s perceived as lame for a social person like me to opt out of a party. I myself have been a perpetrator of this college kid party culture, but I’m standing up now to argue that it shouldn’t be that way.
