Blog 14: Chapter 14: Cheep Beer: The Oxygen of the Greek System

The legacy of “Animal House” lives on…………………. During the 1990’s binge drinking on campuses throughout the country was consistent. “The newspaper adage- “if it bleeds, it leads”-definitely applied to the topic of student drinking in the 1990s” (Sperber 155). Send an eighteen year old to college to drink beer, chase the opposite sex and put partying before grades and still pass. BINGO! They would think that they hit the lottery. Fraternities were the big thing on campus and if you did not belong to one you would join so that you were part of the “BIG” party scene. Alcohol consumption was high on the priority list of college students, next morning syndrome was a question many asked when they woke after a hard night of partying. Described by health professional binge drinking for an average size male is consuming five or more drinks and for a women four or more drinks both in short time periods. Want to speed up the process? Pour some low grade alcohol in a funnel, attach it to a rubber hose and aim it at your throat. College students spend more money on beer than on college books. Most of the bingers belong to the collegiate subcultures and attend the “BIG-TIME UNIVERSITIES.” But that is not to say that smaller universities, private school and Ivy League schools are not right up there with binge drinking. Experts no longer divide colleges into the drinking universities or the non-drinking universities but instead they are divided into the high binge schools and the low binge schools. Would applications decline if the “BIG-TIME” universities were categorized into the less sober schools? “BIG-TIME” universities do not want to be noted as sober schools. “We may lose a game in intercollegiate football or basketball, but we never loose a party” (Sperber 153).