While I'm abroad right now in Spain, I am naturally less in touch with campus happenings. However, I checked the Orient site to read about a friend's photo exhibit in the Visual Arts Center and found the article "Foster calls meeting over 20th transport."
I was shocked to read this! Since coming to Bowdoin, I have always been proud of our low transport numbers, and our general relationship with Security, and the majority of students' relationship with alcohol. Bowdoin not having fraternities played a large part in my decision to come here.
However, I now have to reevaluate what I thought was so great about my fellow students' alcoholic consumption. Twenty transports? That's kind of a lot, guys.
Here in Spain, people drink, but it's more casual, more social. And we drink with food, with tapas, or, as they're called here in the Basque Country, pintxos. And we take our time—one drink at one bar, another at another. And we talk. It's not to get smashed. And at the end you can still go home and have dinner with your family at 10:30 p.m. or whenever.
I'm thinking about drinking cultures and what makes people want to drink so much they need to get their stomachs pumped...Culture-wise, it could be the 21-year-old drinking age, the undergroundness of it all, the "taboo" of it which makes it more desirable.
Is it that people drink hard alcohol because it gets them drunk faster? So it's "easier" in a way? I know some girls on campus shun beer because they think it's going to make them fat and drink shots of vodka instead. And because they haven't eaten all day in order to fit into a particular dress, when it's time to go out, they get drunk even faster.
Plus they drink more than they should to keep up with the guys. And guys really drink a lot to keep up with the other guys. It's all perception, I guess. Or it could be the College House System. I know as a first year, I realized that social house parties were no fun unless you came already drunk, or at least buzzed. The beer was horrible and there were always long lines for it, and as a first year, there weren't as many other parties to go to like Coles Tower or off-campus house parties.
Maybe this will require a more intensive study to really get to the root of the problem. Maybe a series should come out in the Orient, "Why We Drink," where individual students write up blurbs. I would happily be the first. My blurb might start something like this: I drink to get a little buzzed, to laugh a little easier, to dance a little more freely.
But I don't need it. And I never, ever, want to get my stomach pumped. I listen to my body and know what my thresholds are. I know when to stop—usually. I apologize for the handful of times I haven't, and I learn from them. I drink with my friends, and I make sure I know what they're drinking, too.
I worry when I see my friends out of control, and although I don't mind taking care of friends who've gone too far a time or two, I get annoyed when it becomes habitual. And I worry. I thank everyone who has ever taken care of me. It's good to know that we take care of each other, but let's not have to.
Bowdoin, let's get our act together. We're grown ups, after all. Right? To alcohol transports, I say "Basta!" Enough is enough. You're really not having fun if you can't remember the next day. Believe me, I've been there.
Ouda Baxter is a member of the Class of 2011.