I was sitting in class last week when I uncovered the origin of binge-drinking on college campuses. The truth is, it’s the fault of academia itself.
Let me back up. The course was about the literature of colonialism, and the discussion revolved around Jean Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss philosopher of the 18th century. Like most humanities students, I have had much exposure to Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau and other like-minded thinkers who long for mankind’s return to a more natural state.
These men see the modern world as overly complicated by civility, property, unnatural attempts to control impulses and the large degree of emptiness in modern relationships and conversations. In short, they wish mankind could return to living in the woods, sleeping wherever they want, eating whatever they can find and living freely without the constraints of society.
Friday and Saturday nights, binge-drinking college students are simply taking their advice.
They’re just applying this coursework to everyday experience, attempting to recreate Rousseau’s utopian world of noble, uninhibited savages or Thoreau’s synthesis of nature and humanity at Walden Pond. Take a few examples I have encountered in my first few weeks after returning to school:
1. Giving in to the impulses of nature, rather than trying to suppress or control them.
The foundations of modern society, from religion to law, are formed on the principles of self-denial: there are many more “thou shalt nots” than affirmative commands. Both Rousseau and Thoreau fight this characteristic of civilization, urging readers to heed the call of nature.
Joining their fight last weekend was one drunken student in my building. Feeling the natural urge to urinate, he refused to submit to societal expectations as he walked in the hall just three doors away from the bathroom. Instead, he simply entered the nearest room, pulled open a drawer he found satisfactory for his purposes and followed the command of instinct. Following the ancient tradition of the “pee-and-run,” which can be traced to our ancestors in the wild, this wet radical put his academic philosophy to practice.
2. Condemning the social construct of “property.”
Though the student mentioned above might have been simply marking his territory, neither Rousseau nor Thoreau liked the idea of fences or fixed property. Both much preferred the way of living of many early natives, who took only what they needed for themselves from the land, slept where they wanted and were not tied to any permanent residence.
Earlier this fall, another binge-drinking student I encountered felt this same sort of liberation. Attacking the enslavement of routine and fixed property, he refused to follow the herd mentality of civilized man in sleeping every night in his bed. In an act of complete societal defiance, he left his room shortly after midnight to wander the world, eventually resting his head on the hard, cold tile of the bathroom floor for a few hours of peaceful sleep before the sheep of civilization prodded him back to conformity — and his own bed.
3. Denouncing flowery prose that skirts the true meaning.
Thoreau especially looked down upon those who were afraid to speak the truth and hid their true feelings within a web of subtleties and innuendo. He felt most frustrated in this regard when dealing with the issue of slavery, attacking politicians whom he believed felt slavery was wrong but were too cowardly to make strong public statements.
One binge-drinking student saw the wisdom of Thoreau last week when he was spurred to speak his mind by the liquid courage of several pitchers of strong beer and shots of tequila. Violently breaking through the chains of centuries of indoctrinated “social appropriateness,” the student repeatedly asked a female counterpart if she would make out with him. Of course, his ultimate goal was thwarted, but at least he was able to state that goal in language that was concise, unambiguous and free from buried motives or meanings.
University efforts nationwide to curb binge-drinking on college campuses are admirable, but the fact remains that college students generally binge more than any other demographic in the United States. Administrators are at their wits’ end to find solutions, and rightly so. Binge-drinking is an unhealthy way to return to the state of nature, and the clash of modern society, and a few of its members returning to an earlier state through chemicals can lead to disaster.
But maybe administrators should simply view this binge-drinking epidemic in a new light. Maybe it is not that students are simply depressed or bored; maybe it is not that they lack alternatives to drinking. Maybe these binge-drinkers are simply being the dutiful, if misguided, students all colleges seek in the first place.
After all, these drinkers are only doing their homework.
Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.
