This one's doomed from the start

The latest salvo in the University's crusade against underage drinking graced the front page of the 'Prince' earlier this month. Termed the "Prospect Initiative," it calls for one eating club each week to host an alcohol-free party. Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson hailed it as a plan that serves "people who don't choose to drink or don't want to be in an environment where there's alcohol, but don't want to miss out on elemental aspects of social life at Princeton."

And therein lies the flaw that destines it for the dustbin of Princeton's social-engineering programs.

The Fields Center and the residential colleges regularly host respectably-popular alcohol-free social events. The Trustees' Alcohol Initiative bankrolls more events, some of which are even held at the clubs. The Prospect Intuitive makes a fine addition to these, and is sure to attract people who prefer alcohol-free events to alcohol-fueled ones. But to imagine that it will make anything more than a negligible dent in drinking at Princeton.

Why? Because alcohol is itself an "elemental aspect of social life at Princeton." Because is the lubricant that makes much of the 'Street' tolerable. Most of all, because the average Thursday and Saturday night is not a cacophony of bad beer and bad music by chance, by caprice, or by the machinations of Anheuser-Busch, but rather because the alcohol-friendly 'Street' is in fact a highly tailored system that evolved to suit to Princeton students' tastes.

I'll explain.

Consider Colonial Club, the bellwether of the 'Street.' On your typical Saturday night, the club is packed so tightly with underclassmen that one does not walk through the club —- one wades. One does not dance; one gyrates in place. D.J. Bob blasts "Worst Hits of the '80s" at decibel levels that OSHA lawyers have wet dreams about. Much of the club is dark; much of the floor is slicked with beer. It is hot. It is humid. It is smelly. And yet, it is packed, night after night. Why?

The Beast-and-D.J.-Bob default on Prospect Avenue is carefully geared to do one thing and to do it very well: it is designed encourage social contact between students who lack confidence (whether due to unfounded insecurity or to genuine shortcomings) in their social skills. It is a haven for social contact designed to minimize the chance that one's social ineptness might be exposed.

Boring conversationalists can take solace, for ear-liquifying disk jockeys provide an excuse to exchange no more than two words. Lousy dancers (a cadre into which this author certainly falls) can take refuge in dance floors so crowded as to make any elaborate moves impossible. Sloppy dressers and those unhappy with their physical appearance have less cause to worry on Prospect than they do in precept — save for a few disco balls or spotlights, most dance-halls are coal mine-dark. And the force behind it all — the one trick that lets otherwise rational people actually enjoy an overly loud, overcrowded, ill-lit, sticky-floored, sweaty, smelly, humid eating club is the bottomless supply of cheap beer. The loud, easily-danceable music, overcrowded rooms, and dim lights are all helpful, but it is the alcohol that really erodes Princeton students' neuroses.

The omnipresent freshman-dorm posters trumpet the unspoken truths: "Beer! Helping ugly people have sex since 1862." "Beer! Helping white guys dance since 1842." Princeton students are by no means alone in their use of alcohol to dissolve inhibitions. Princeton's uniqueness comes from the single-minded devotion with which eating clubs have been devoted — knowingly or unknowingly — to constructing an environment which minimizes the possibility that one's social shortcomings will be exposed in public. Alcohol is the linchpin of this system; an alcohol-free Street would be radically different. (As an aside, I believe it would be better for Princetonians to confront their neuroses rather than drowning them in alcohol, but, short of a Gestapo-esque Borough crackdown, alcohol will remain a part of Street culture indefinitely.)

This leaves the Prospect Initiative in a rough spot. If most students do not drink alcohol simply because their friends drink (peer pressure), but instead drink in order to dissolve their neuroses, inhibitions, and gaps in confidence, an alcohol-free party is unlikely to draw them in. If alcohol is inexorably intertwined with Street culture, a weekly alcohol-free event is likely to draw no more than the audience presently drawn to alcohol-free events at Fields or in the residential colleges. To the extent that it provides another venue for the tee-totaling crowd, the Initiative will be a success. But it will effect no net change upon Street culture. Joseph Barillari is a computer science major from North Canton, Ohio. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays. He can be reached at jbarilla@princeton.edu.