If in any other context someone were to be invited to a filthy room stuffed with incoherent people tripping over each other and screaming along to the elementary words of a sacrilegious rapper, it would provoke a hard "no." The media, with the aid of the peer pressure to recap the “crazy” stories from the night before, has promoted college partying to be both reckless and glamorous. As new freshmen find their way around campus and into the party scene, it is important to understand that college parties never live up to their expectation, and it is okay to say no.
The National Institute on Alcohol Use and Alcoholism says the first six weeks of college is the most likely time for students to develop bad habits as they conform to social pressures and the image of what they believe college should be like. Unfortunately, college partying is so emphasized in pop culture that it is difficult to even comprehend a college career without it. Over 80 percent of students drink alcohol in college, and nearly 19 percent even qualify for an alcohol use disorder. But as the age-old advice goes, just because everyone else is doing it does not mean that you should, too.
Between classes, work, sleep and studying, college students only have an average of four hours a day to commit to recreational activities. Spending this time attending parties restricts from other activities that better one’s physical and emotional health and help reap the benefits of a costly education. Worse still, many students go over the four-hour limit, taking time away from sleep and studying to party even longer. In fact, one in every four college students admits that partying has negatively affected their grades, and is that not the reason that we all attend college in the first place?
Just last weekend, I was lounging on a pool chair outside, and out of nowhere, a table that had been thrown by a nearby drunk boy nailed me in the leg. Unfortunately, injuries like this are quite common. Even without drinking, students are still at risk simply by being present at the scene. Nearly 696,000 students each year are assaulted by a student who has been drinking, not to mention the nearly 2,000 who die from alcohol-related injuries and the other questionable activities that take place. About 97,000 people are raped or face attempted raped with alcohol involved. Partying in college is a perceived rite of passage — something that can only be successfully executed once fully outside the parents’ grasp. Yet the irony is that in trying to break away from parents, students are making poorer decisions.
Believe it or not, there are actually things to do on a college campus outside the party scene. Over 400 student organizations exist on the campus, and while Columbia is a small city, it is a city nonetheless with new places to visit and people to meet. And by meeting people this way, they will actually remember you the next day. Life may be short, but time in college is shorter, so don't throw away your precious four years of career development and hundreds of thousands of dollars in education.