Sitting in my commons room, surrounded by my peers with a plate of fancy desserts at my elbow and Dean Sue sitting on a couch to my left, I find myself wrestling with the same question it seems the entire campus is brawling with: What's wrong with Duke? And even harder; what do we do about it? How does one go about fixing a culture?
Our binge drinking and ensuing stupidity is a tired act, and yet we cling to it like it's a matter of survival. We cling to it on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings, reveling in the stupidity allotted to us by the excuse of intoxication.
And now that this drunken behavior has come to define us as Duke students we're indignant, frustrated and furious. But as we demand that someone fix it, with programming or propaganda or something, we miss the bigger issue; we aren't willing to change. We aren't willing to separate "playing hard" from "drinking hard." We refuse to call anything other than joining a moshpit of drunks fun. We will not "party" without excessive amounts of alcohol.
What I realize while I am sitting in this circle of brilliant but stumped people is that no one can fix this for us.
What we need is peer pressure. I know. I said it.
It's been a nastily connoted word since it was first introduced to you during preadolescence in conjunction with alcohol and sex and smoking. oh my! But consider for a moment how effective peer pressure is-you tried the cigarette, didn't you? You bought the UGG boots. You shotgunned the cheap beer.
If only we could apply peer pressure's power in a positive way. If only we could make healthy consumption of alcohol "vogue." If only we could change "I was so drunk last night" from its current position as a bragging right to a less flattering admission of a lack of self control. The thing is, we can. The student body controls what is deemed cool and what is not.
Personally, I don't feel that vomiting profusely and struggling to remember your activities the night before is cool. I also don't feel that getting so drunk that you can't walk or making a complete idiot of yourself because you have no faculties of reason is fun.
Does anyone really enjoy being hung over and confused? There must be a way to party hard without getting to the point of drunken stupidity that leaves us with lots of repercussions but without any memories.
The administration is not capable of fixing this problem, no matter how much thought they give it or how much money they throw at it. No single individual is. What it will take is a shifting of group ideals and values. It will take brave souls who are willing to change the subject matter of their bragging, the Friday morning bus conversation, the definition of fun.
So I challenge each of you (and quite honestly, myself) to be that brave soul. Drink in moderation Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. Stop associating drunken stupor with fun and sobriety with boredom. Tell someone the real reason you did or did not enjoy yourself. Was it really that you didn't get wasted, or was it because the girl you're interested in spent the entire night clinging to someone else? Acknowledge that you had fun, not because you consumed massive quantities of disgusting beer, but because you had ridiculous girl talk with your friends in your hall at 3 a.m.
Stop allowing your social status to be correlated to your alcohol consumption. I challenge you to drink responsibly. and be proud of it. Because only we can "fix" Duke.
Kimberly Silenzi is a Trinity freshman.
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