Photo courtesy of Unsplash
On [July 27, 2022], Teen Vogue published an article titled “Gen Z is Sober Curious: Why Many Young People Are Rethinking Their Relationship With Alcohol.” Teen Vogue defines “sober curious” as “dabbling in a lifestyle of drinking less or not at all.” In the article, Fortesa Latfi presents the statistics: “Gen Z drinks less than millennials.”
As a small liberal arts college, Connecticut College does not have a “party school” reputation, perhaps because we lack Greek life, a component of student life that is portrayed as typically responsible for parties where people drink tons of alcohol. There are posters everywhere stating that “42% of students chose DID NOT DRINK.” Although it may be on a smaller scale than other schools, and despite the fact that a significant amount of students choose not to participate in the party scene, Foresta Latifi’s findings do not appear to align with Conn.
We may not have Greek life here, but that doesn’t stop the partying. For upperclassmen, Conn offers “off-campus” housing: the Village, which is across the street from the main campus, by the athletic center. All interviewees have called the River Ridge apartments the “frat houses.” Parties tend to occur on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, and appear to be especially popular with student athletes. A sophomore who wished to remain anonymous stated that these parties mostly happen with the hockey team, but Jocelyn Pinero ‘24 added that they are popular with the field hockey and soccer team as well. She went on to describe how these parties are “very crowded, very unsanitary,” people are “drinking to get drunk,” and that leaving the parties “can be scary on a dark campus with a lot of people around.”
The college also does not have strict consequences for students who drink. May Kotsen ‘23, stated that “the college doesn’t actively try to find drunk people.” That being said, our college is tough on fake IDs, often used by people under twenty-one to purchase alcohol. The previously mentioned sophomore stated that the college confiscated fake IDs and “has a binder
full of them.” On the other hand, Nicollette Roark ‘24, considers the policy regarding on-campus drinking to be tough, but it can be hard to monitor drinking off-campus. Parties do happen, and campus police will sometimes come through and take names. Roark has heard of somebody being brought to the Honor Council for drinking, but she has no idea what happened to the student, and conceded that it may have just been legend. “I didn’t know them very well, so I didn’t follow up,” she stated. Pinero was on the Honor Council during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years, and she remembers that the handling of drinking was “really dependent on [the] person’s background,” being affected by things such as previous offenses, whether or not the offender was underage, or “if the party was registered with alcohol.” Pinero believes that the college could do better than just telling its students not to drink.
Located in Cro, next to Oasis Snack Shop, is a pub called Humphrey’s, which, according to Conn’s website, “serves beer and wine to students of legal drinking age.” But Humphrey’s does not appear to be popular among students, as the sophomore interviewed had never heard of the pub, and Roark and Kotsen have both stated that they have never heard of anyone going to Humphrey’s or been there themselves. “I might, though,” said Kotsen when asked about going to Humphrey’s. Granted, the college experience of all of these students has been altered by COVID, leading to three semesters of online classes from home, and Humphrey’s has been closed until this past spring. Pinero stated that when it first opened then, it was at “full capacity” with a long line and people being turned away because of this. She mentioned that this happened “consistently, for the first couple of weeks.”
Teen Vogue may be right, despite the fact that the majority of Gen Z is under the legal drinking age. But one thing is for sure: drinking at Conn is here to stay. Does this mean that we are on equal footing with the big state schools when it comes to drinking? No. When asked to rate the frequency of drinking on campus on a scale from one to ten, Roark rated it a seven. Pinero gave two ratings: a five for what the college knows about, and an eight for what actually happens. Kotsen stated that drinking was “frequent, but not abnormally frequent.” Now, drinking can be expected on most college campuses. “I think especially with restrictive parents, students will go crazy in college,” stated the sophomore. And she’s right. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) states that “Around 9 percent of full-time college students ages 18 to 22 meet the criteria for past-year AUD [alcohol use disorder], according to a 2019 national survey.” However, there are myriad reasons why a person chooses not to drink: family history of alcoholism, religious conviction, or adverse health effects, just to name a few. And on any given weekend, 25 percent of students on campus are not drinking, as stated by Director of Wellbeing and Health Promotion CC Curtiss during her Sept. 14 First-Year Seminar Common Experience presentation on alcohol. Conn seems to tolerate people who choose to remain sober, though the college is certainly not as “sober-curious” as Gen Z.
