College is a place for a lot of things. A place to make friends, a place to expand our horizons, a place to try things you never had the opportunity to try before, and, yes, a place to drink. While it's probably not what our parents are paying thousands of dollars for, drinking has been part of, either directly or indirectly, virtually every college student's experience for as long as alcohol and education have existed simultaneously—in other words, a very long time. While most students embrace this culture of working hard and playing harder, and others passively accept that it's college and drinking is going to happen whether they like it or not, we have to wake up and realize that we are not immune to the realities of life outside of the Bowdoin bubble.
I, like many of you, think the Brunswick Police Department asking for and receiving a $12,000 state grant to crack down on underage college drinking is unfair and an insult to the College's own security force that continues to do an outstanding job of ensuring the safety of Bowdoin students who do decide to drink. While it may seem like the cops are out for blood, we must admit at least some responsibility for the events that have gotten us to this point. We have had 20 alcohol related transports to local hospitals this year. We've had at least one every weekend since the new semester started. We've eclipsed last year's mark for alcohol transports by three, and we still have over three months left in this semester.
We have been fortunate in years past to have had a reasonably good rapport with the police and the town in general. We haven't had to drink with the fear of "getting busted" with a permanent stain on our personal record. But it's a new decade and we should've known the truth behind the old adage, "nothing stays the same forever."
Blame it on Obama's stimulus package, the actions of an irresponsible few, or a shift in police's focus, but no amount of blame is going to change the current predicament we're in. We'd all love to believe Bowdoin is this protective cocoon in which anything we do will have limited consequences, but the truth is our campus is closely woven into the town we all chose to call home. If we decide to blast music in the middle of the night, we can expect neighbors to get angry. If we are underage and drink in public, we can expect to be held responsible. If we drive drunk, we can expect to be pulled over. Bowdoin is a college, but it's also part of the real world.
I'm not suggesting that we should all stop drinking if we're underage, because realistically that's just not going to happen. Nor am I suggesting we stop having loud parties, because that just would be boring. What I am suggesting is that we begin to understand that, even in college, our actions have very real and significant consequences. Our actions now will affect us in the future, and we are subject to the same laws and expectations as the rest of America.
College isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. Don't expect it to be one. Take responsibilities for your actions, and if you do get in trouble, blame no one but yourself. Maybe if we stop thinking that we're immune from the real-world consequences our actions have, we'll start to act more responsibly. Maybe if we act more responsibly, we'll start to regain the trust and confidence of this College and this town.