SPEED CHUGGING AT PRINCETON Opposed to flowing rivers of tasteless, tepid beer? Just say no. BY KELLEY KING '98
A recent editorial in the Buffalo News relates what I would guess to be the knee-jerk reaction of the greater part of the nation to the alcohol-induced death of Scott Krueger, fraternity pledge at MIT: "If this can happen to a former high school honors student from Brainiac University," observes the columnist, "it can happen to just about anybody." Not exactly an eloquent statement, but telling, nevertheless: it points to a common misconception about the drinking culture and certain college campuses. It is a misconception fed by late-night movies and after-school specials, in which the guys crushing the beer cans on their heads boast state school acronyms on their team jackets, and four-eyed engineers and well-groomed Ivy League prepsters talk derivatives and gubernatorial races over chips and dip. The aggressive hazing and related deaths this past year of young men at Louisiana State University and Maryland's Frostburg State University seemed, no less tragic, but somehow more feasible than the fate of MIT's Scott Krueger. While accounts of the catastrophes at LSU and Frostburg consistently led to recycled commentary on that evil despot running "party" schools, the Greek system, reports of Krueger's death invariably divulged his blood-alcohol content (.410) in the same paragraph as his high school class rank (near the top of his class).
While the mere mention of "state school" conjures up images of Animal House, not many are going to free-associate the letters MIT with getting smashed or with anything other than the sober workings of academia. ASHEN-FACED WUNDERKINDER If the Buffalo News were to name the top-ten "Brainiac Universities," our very own Princeton, which ho-hums at the regular additions of Nobel winners to its alumni ranks, would undoubtedly make the list. Yet we fit this mold just about as snugly as MIT. As every Princetonian is aware, for every waxen-complected study geek nestled in the library on Saturday night, there are, as illustrated by Walter Kirn '83 in an October 3 column in The New York Times, a collection of "ashen-faced Wunderkinder vomiting in the bushes." Kirn's attempt at expose' was probably successful; I know that it has taken four years to convince the Penn State-proud members of my own family that speed chugging is not a practice singular to the Big Ten. My mother, who still, on occasion, will flip through the Princeton catalogue to delight in the images of ruddy-cheeked students frolicking in autumn leaves and absorbed in lecture hall, cowered while I took the occasion of Easter brunch two years ago to cheerfully rattle off a spare-no-details report of my eating club's bicker and initiation process. Kirn's estimation that alcohol plays a major role in the Princeton social climate is irrefutable. A 1996 survey distributed by Princeton Health Services numbered binge drinkers at 42% of the student population, just two points shy of the national college average estimated by the Harvard School of Public Health in 1994. Some ambitious, but laughably ineffectual, motions have been made as of late by some eating clubs in an effort to curb underage drinking by marking the hands of minors; however, for the most part an unlimited quantity of tasteless, tepid beer is to be enjoyed by anyone who can elbow their way to shouting distance from those upperclassmen stationed behind the slimy bars of their eating clubs along Prospect Street. In the wee hours of Friday and Sunday morning, Milwaukee's Best is the Nectar of the Gods, and a four-fold throng of sweaty students resort to shameless begging for a plastic cup of what is essentially malt-laced foam. For those of us whom the negative effects of alcohol only add up to some embarrassing episodes and a couple of rough nights spent overheated-cheek-to-cold-tile, the easy access of alcohol at Princeton makes us feel, well, lucky. I have friends at urban-based schools who regularly shell out 50 bucks a night cruising the bars, and I know of schools where quiet cocktail parties are sniffed out by patrol units. RESPONSIBILITY IN THE "GREAT AMERICAN BAR SCENE" Prospect Street is and has long been a no-fly zone, a tree-lined clubhouse over which an invisible sign hovers, NO ADULTS ALLOWED. Suffice it to say, a love of drink certainly doesn't hurt a pledge's chance of getting accepted into many of our university's eating clubs and fraternal organizations, past and present. Like the Nude Olympics, hazing, the likes of which led to the recently publicized deaths of fraternity-bound freshmen, is a tradition that dates back to the early years of Princeton. And as long as students have expressed feelings about the "pressure to drink," the university has made feeble attempts to amend what they complain to the debased state of student social life. In 1897, barely two decades after the first eating clubs were recognized on campus, the college gathered in Alexander Hall to put forth a motion to abolish hazing. "There is an incongruity between the splendid buildings and intellectual life here and the rowdyism of a practice like hazing," read the next day's Daily Princetonian. But, as prognosticated by a dean in that very meeting, "Discipline goes a little way in correcting such evils," and the rowdyism continued to flourish. Although fraternities were banned in 1855, during the presidency of John Maclean, and President Woodrow Wilson worried about the influence the newly created eating clubs had on the social and intellectual life of the students, 250 years have shown us that the pressure to drink isn't created within the confines of our social institutions, but inherent in many of our adolescent, overexcited, eager-to-please, and sometimes insecure selfhoods. The rationale that one uses in blueprinting a combustion engine does not necessarily guide him within the beer-soaked, hormone-heavy tap rooms of Prospect Street. As expressed by MIT spokesman in response to Krueger's death, "We," meaning the MIT student populous, but also meaning we, the Wunderkinder of Walter Kirn's appellation, "are not exempt." However, the notion, put forth by past administrators and concerned alumni, that tragic, alcohol-related accidents at Princeton can be averted through abolition of eating clubs, fraternities, and other social institutions where alcohol plays a role is, quite obviously, an exercise in futility; Princeton nurtures its traditions, and it seems that organized drinking (can you imagine a dry Reunions?) is one of them. Furthermore, this line of logic wrongly blames systems for the deliberate, however misguided, actions of individuals. Who didn't think it preposterous, a few years ago, that alumnus Bruce Miller accumulated $1.8 million in reparations from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and the Campus and Cottage eating clubs, who had served him the beer that he claimed had caused him to climb aboard a train and get electrocuted? Scott Krueger's death, like Miller's debilitating accident, should, and does, scare us. But, ideally, rather than scaring us away from drinking, these incidents should encourage us on the path of becoming a member of that lofty species of grown-up: responsible drinkers. And what practical end might be reached in shunning those organizations in which alcohol is proffered? Eating clubs and fraternities only preempt the corporate world's Great American Bar Scene, another alluring, looming institution in which character points are often distributed in terms of shot intake and where the violent and foolish outcomes of inebriation have the potential to manifest themselves. As one does not graduate into a childproofed America, it is perhaps expedient to challenge college students--legal if not acting adults--to start making adult decisions.