Although shotgunning beers and doing beer bongs may be common weekend activities at Duke, these drinking habits are less customary in most parts of the world.
For some students coming from abroad, the introduction into Duke's drinking culture and the harsh enforcement of American laws surrounding underage drinking provide for shocking, strange and often frustrating experiences. The drinking age in the U.S. is the highest of any Western nation.
"It's not that big of a deal in Germany," said senior Maria Topp, who has lived in both Singapore and Germany. "People just go have a couple of beers and go home, whereas at Duke it's way more of a binge drinking culture-people are just out of control."
Senior Melissa Wiesner-an American who spent her teenage years living in Lima, Peru-said she did not experience the same culture shock when it came to college drinking habits. But she explained that unlike most Duke undergraduates, many international students do not have as many drunk nights, blackouts and hangovers, and they tend to have a refined taste for the alcohol they consume.
For Ece Ozalp, a freshman from Istanbul, Turkey, the student frenzy to guzzle the low-quality booze offered at most section parties is simply "weird."
"People at all these frat parties are drinking ugly beer that tastes like s-," Ozalp said. "People treat it as if it was champagne."
Why the difference?
Many international students cited the U.S. drinking age as not only a major source of personal vexation but also as a reason for the extreme drinking behavior perpetuated on campus.
Approximately 90 percent of alcohol consumption for people under the age of 21 in the U.S. is binge drinking, according to 2005 statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The proportion of binge drinkers is highest among 18-20 year-olds, at 51 percent, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Senior Andrea Marston said that when she came to Duke from Alberta, Canada, the high U.S. drinking age forced her to become "younger" and sneak around to avoid getting in trouble.
"I got annoyed because I felt like the system didn't trust me to be a responsible person," she said. "It forces a certain amount of immaturity on people to have to go behind closed doors."
And unlike in many foreign countries, discussions between parents and teenagers in the United States about the pros and cons of alcohol are not ubiquitous, international students said
"I think that the fact people drink when they are at home living with their parents teaches them to drink more responsibly than they do over here," said Chamindra Goonewardene, a senior from Sri Lanka. "I think a lot of [Americans] are exposed to alcohol for the first time here at college, and that isn't constructive."
Implications for Amethyst
Over the summer, President Richard Brodhead was one of 130 college presidents and chancellors who signed onto a public statement-the Amethyst Initiative-which calls for an "informed and dispassionate debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age."
The movement argues that the minimum drinking age and punishment for underage offenders creates "a culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking.'"
Many international students said they support the initiative and also favor lowering the drinking age, saying it will help promote alcohol use as something socially acceptable and done in the open.
"I think that we are one of the countries that has the latest legal drinking age and it reflects in the number of cases we have of drinking-related illness and addiction to alcohol," Wiesner said.
Other international students said lowering the drinking age would not completely solve binge drinking habits but may cut them down drastically on college campuses.
Junior Kate Van Buskirk from Ontario, Canada said drinking would no longer be such a novelty by the time students enter college.
"I think it's a good thing because when you are having your crazy period you're still living at home so your parents can keep an eye on you," Marston said. "So, you can go crazy but only to a certain extent."
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