Emily Campbell

Almost three decades ago, the College banned fraternities from campus, transforming social life at Bowdoin and creating the College House System. One major reason for the ban, as cited by the commission that recommended fraternity abolition, was a toxic drinking culture associated with settings outside the College’s control. Since then, Bowdoin students have continued drinking socially, primarily on campus, but their habits have changed over the years.

Of those who responded to this fall’s Bowdoin Orient Student Survey, the majority of students in each class year reported regularly consuming alcohol. Older class years consume more than younger ones, but only the first-year class had less than three-quarters, 54 percent, of respondents report alcohol consumption.

While records of events registered with the Office of Residential Life do not capture all drinking that occurs on campus, there appears to have been a significant decrease over the last decade in the proportion of social events registered with alcohol. According to data accessed by the Orient, the 2013 fall semester had a total of 73 registered events, 71 of which were registered with alcohol. Last fall, the total number of registered events was higher at 88, but just 50 of those were registered with alcohol.

Nationally, data shows that drinking among college students has steadily declined over the past several decades. College administrators shed light on where Bowdoin fits into this trend, in social spheres like the College Houses and beyond.

 

DECLINE IN TRANSPORTS, CITATIONS

Associate Vice President for Safety and Security Randy Nichols cautioned against placing too much weight on statistics as the sole indicator of trends in campus drinking culture. However, he said that over the last 15 years, alcohol citations and hospital transports have trended down after a peak between 2009 and 2012. According to Nichols, those years saw an average of around 26 alcohol-related transports, whereas transport numbers in recent years have dropped into the teens.

“We've seen our transport rates go down, generally speaking, and at least maintain a certain level over recent years,” Nichols said.

Similarly, he noted that student citations for alcohol have dropped from around 150 to 50 per year since the 2009–2012 period. Nichols mentioned potential factors for the decline, including milder enforcement practices and a generational shift in drinking attitudes.

“I think part of it could be how we approach enforcement,… part of it could be the generational, campus culture aspect to it,” Nichols commented. “I'm pleased with the general culture. There are always things that we try to focus most of our efforts on: high-risk drinking and behavior that's out of the norm.”

“[The abuse of] hard alcohol is at the root of almost all of our alcohol transports to the hospital,” Nichols added.

 

(PRE)GAMING THE SYSTEM

For many years, College House parties were a primary place for students, especially underclassmen, to find alcohol on campus. These parties would often register kegs and get students in the door with the promise of beer.

In the 2000s, Houses often paid for alcohol with dues from their first year affiliates. At the time, each House was affiliated with an entire brick. Senior Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Whitney Hogan ’07 recalled unpleasant memories of being asked for dues as a first-year student.

“I lived in Winthrop, and my affiliate house was Ladd. During orientation, Ladd members came to Winthrop and canvassed our doors for cash,” Hogan said of the former College House. “I was like, ‘No, this isn’t comfortable or welcoming at all.’”

She added that when she returned to the College as an administrator in 2011, the practice of collecting alcohol dues from first years had ended—and it seems to have stayed that way.

Current Reed House resident Marcus Chiang ’27 said that he isn’t aware of Reed or any other College Houses formally collecting dues for alcohol now.

“[Dues] are not something I’ve heard about,” he said.

In contrast to the 2000s and 2010s, College House parties and other large weekend events now rarely serve alcohol. Instead, students tend to “pregame” nights out in groups of friends or with teams or clubs, anticipating a lack of alcohol at registered events.

“I understand that … students almost never choose to register kegs or 30-racks for College-approved events,” Assistant Class Dean Michael Wood ’06 wrote in an email to the Orient. “That is quite different from when I attended Bowdoin between 2002–2006 and when I worked in the dean’s office between 2012–2015.”

Andrew Park ’15 agreed.

“The [College Houses] would host parties, and at the time [2011-2015] they would register two or three kegs of beer,” Park said. “It would happen at least once a week, if not two times a week, depending on the house.”

College Houses’ shift away from providing alcohol at parties appears to have developed rapidly in the past few years, coinciding with the apparent phasing out of alcohol dues.

Tor Parker ’21 remembered that almost every party she went to at Bowdoin supplied some kind of alcohol, whether at the College Houses, dorm parties or off-campus houses.

“The parties seemed to really [have alcohol for] everyone when I was a freshman and sophomore,” Parker said. “That was kind of the way that you got alcohol during those years.”

Caleb Eurich ’21 echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that underage students could count on the College House parties for drinks when they were hard to find elsewhere.

“When I was a freshman, people would just go to College Houses, slam as many free beers as possible,” Eurich said.

Chiang, the current Reed resident, said that his house refrains from providing alcohol at its parties, in part because of the added liability.

“I think we don't serve because we like to let people make that decision for themselves,” Chiang said.

Bridget Killian Chansakul ’16, who was on ResLife for multiple years as a student, said that having alcohol served at larger parties was seen as a safer model in her time at Bowdoin.

“Coming from being on ResLife, the thought process behind having [alcohol] at parties was to discourage excessive pregaming,” she said. “You didn't have to consume it all within an hour before you went out, [because] there was going to be alcohol where you went.”

Chansakul added that having alcohol at regulated parties was safer because beer was available, rather than hard liquor.

Jonathan Wu ’28 said he has not known College Houses to provide alcohol at parties but thinks it is better for alcohol to be unavailable at parties, given that students are now sure to pregame.

“I think that College Houses not providing [alcohol] is safer and better,” Wu said. “Especially with [pregames], you can go to one and then not have to drink even more [at a party].”

Hogan said that, although she has anecdotally heard of the shift to pregames, she was not sure of the cause of the change.

“I don’t have a real sense of why [students are choosing to pregame], other than that the Bowdoin that exists today is not necessarily the Bowdoin of 15 years ago,” she said.

 

TIMES CHANGE—POLICY DOESN’T?

Despite the changes in how students drink, the College’s policies surrounding alcohol have changed little since the 1990s. Hard alcohol has been banned at Bowdoin since 1999.

Prior to 1996—the year before fraternity abolition—the Student Handbook (now known as the Code of Community Standards) contained a statement on alcohol noting that “the College is far more concerned with respecting the preferences, rights, and responsibilities of individuals than reflecting ethical positions on the legal consumption of alcohol.”

Starting in 1996, the statement changed to read, “Ultimately, this policy is intended to honor both the rights of the individual and the standards of the community.”

The College’s policies must abide by Maine state law and its legal drinking age of 21, and Hogan articulated that ResLife’s approach aims to comply with the law while also focusing on student wellness.

“We’re constantly trying to balance policy enforcement, health promotion and risk reduction, and personal responsibility,” Hogan said of her office’s approach to alcohol.

Bowdoin required event registration for on-campus events with alcohol prior to fraternity abolition, and this system continues today. Hogan emphasized that event registration is a common system for colleges and universities and that it serves an important safety function for ResLife as well as Safety and Security, especially because it requires a registered host over 21 for parties with alcohol present.

“[Registration] enables Security to staff accurately over the course of the semester.… They know to pull in extra officers if there are four or five huge events,” Hogan said.

Wood noted that, if anything, the College’s approach to regulating student alcohol use has become less punitive compared to the early 2000s.

“Since I matriculated, there has been less emphasis on penalizing students for drinking and a greater focus on risk reduction and wellness,” he wrote.

Wood speculated that the demise of fraternity culture may have allowed Bowdoin to focus less on penalizing alcohol use than in the past.

“When I was a first-year,… Bowdoin was at the tail end of what I’m sure was a long and challenging transition from a fraternity-infused culture,” Wood said. “There may have been greater emphasis [in the early 2000s] on penalizing students related to alcohol use, as the College was actively dismantling a culture that may have had a more intense drinking culture.”

 

THE COVID EFFECT

According to multiple alumni, changes in drinking enforcement—both on and off campus—were particularly palpable in the years immediately prior to Covid-19.

During these years, alumni remember the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) beginning to enforce underage drinking laws more strictly. Both Parker and Eurich highlighted a number of student parties both on and off campus that were shut down by BPD and resulted in citations.

“BPD … started to seem to crack down more on underage drinking in a way that I was surprised about,” Parker said. “I was living in a College House, and we threw a party. Someone got sick, and one of the people in our house got in trouble with the police—which [shocked us], because we had been explicitly told by the College, ‘As long as you’re [drinking] on campus, you’re good.”

Eurich echoed this sentiment.

“My freshman year, the relationship between Security and Brunswick police was pretty good,” Eurich said. “I think that relationship definitely got worse.”

As campus life—and parties—came to a halt during the pandemic, many drinking-related student traditions changed or disappeared when students came back to Bowdoin’s campus in full capacity during the fall 2021 semester. Some alumni attributed this loss to the College’s increased role in regulating student social life during Covid.

“We were really regimented [by the College],” Parker said. “I wonder if that’s not part of it.”

One of the most notable changes to campus drinking culture after the pandemic was the restructuring of Ivies weekend. The Spring Concert, which traditionally took place on the Saturday of Ivies, was moved earlier in the semester, and other events and traditions were modified.

Nichols claimed these changes have resulted in fewer instances of high-risk drinking and an overall safer environment for students during Ivies.

“I would say Ivies is probably lower-risk now. It's safer,” he said. “Is it as much fun for students as it used to be? Probably not.”

Overall, Nichols acknowledged that Covid provided an opportunity for the College to rethink several student events and aspects of campus life.

“I mean, there's a lot of changes … that the College has taken, that Covid accelerated,” Nichols said.

Despite a number of cultural changes, sources consistently pointed to at least one constant: Bowdoin students are committed to taking care of their peers and want one another to be safe and have positive experiences with alcohol.

“As a community, I think Bowdoin … is pretty good about looking out for each other and making sure everybody is okay,” Park said.