Orange and blacked out

“It wasn’t as much like a back-alley rape, but … I couldn’t say yes or no,” she explained. “I couldn’t say: ‘Wait, I can’t really control myself at this point. Why am I going with this?’ ”

Early last Friday morning, while some students were still nursing hangovers, a group of undergraduates, faculty members and administrators from 17 different schools came to campus to participate in a conference on high-risk drinking that was sponsored by the Alcohol Coalition Committee (ACC). The two-day conference was intended to address the drinking culture on college campuses and the behavior of students like Rodriguez who find themselves in dangerous situations because of excessive alcohol consumption.

At Princeton, the high-risk drinking that the ACC sought to address is often closely associated with the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue, but much of the most dangerous drinking on campus happens during pregaming in the dorms rather than on the Street, several students said.

Many undergraduates noted that the Street provides a relatively safe drinking environment, especially compared to other schools.

“I’ve visited friends at six of the top 10 nationally ranked party schools,” said Jim, a former eating club president whose name, like those of several students interviewed for this article, has been changed to protect his privacy. “Princeton has by far the safest drinking culture of all of them.”

Mary ’11 said the “scariest” drinking incident she’s seen was at a New Year’s Eve party held at a state college. During the small gathering, a male student passed out and was unresponsive for six hours. After waking up drunk the following morning, he tried to drive home, and his friends had to stand in front of his car to prevent him from leaving.

“That was not at an eating club. It was not a huge ‘rager,’ ” she said. “If he were at a room party at Princeton he would have been [sent to] McCosh. No, he would have been [sent to UMCP]. I’ve seen people in much less worse states, and they were [taken to the hospital].”

Joel ’12 said he thought the clubs might actually reduce the prevalence of dangerous drinking on campus.

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“I think in a way … the Street is a good thing,” he explained. “If it wasn’t there, I think a lot of these people would be drinking more in their rooms … and drinking more hard alcohol because they’re going to get that instead of beer.”

Students who only drink at the clubs and don’t pregame are rarely sent to the McCosh Health Center, Cloister Inn and Interclub Council president Aran Clair ’10 said.

“You just can’t get that intoxicated from Beast alone. I mean, its 4 percent alcohol,” he explained.

Several other students also said they thought that most high-risk drinking on campus occurs at room parties rather than on the Street.

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“Most of the real drunkenness comes from the pregaming, I think, with shots beforehand,” George ’11 explained. “What people get really drunk on is just taking shots. You can’t drink that much beer that quickly because you’ll throw up just from the sheer amount of liquid.”

Students cited a number of different reasons for engaging in high-risk drinking, including alcohol’s function as a “social lubricant” on campus as well as its role in relieving academic stress.

Many students, like several people at the ACC conference, noted that academic pressure plays an important role in on-campus drinking activity.

“There is a lot of attention paid here to academics, and it appears as though we’re still paying attention to it even when we’re ‘partying,’ ” Betsy ’10 said in an e-mail, adding that students often drink to celebrate academic accomplishments like getting a good grade or finishing a big paper.

“Freshman year I drank myself into a lot of trouble,” she explained. “I’ve heard that I’m not alone — that a lot of attractive, social freshman girls end up drinking too much and making a lot of mistakes that later earn them a ‘reputation.’ ”

After being sexually assaulted at an eating club and sent to the emergency room on three separate occasions, Betsy sought alcohol counseling.

“[Counseling] really straightened out my behavior,” she said. “Still, it’s very hard not to slip up and binge drink when so many of those around me do so.”

Hank ’11 noted that in some social circles on campus, “you want to be the person who drinks a ton and blacks out.”

“People have a certain amount of pride in how much they abuse themselves with alcohol,” he explained.

This kind of social pressure contributes to dangerous drinking behavior more than academic stresses, several students said.

“If we had less academic stress, would we drink less? Probably not,” Mary said. “We’d probably drink more.”

Joel, an athlete, said he drank most often with his sports team.

“The sporting organization that I’m in is a really big [alcohol] provider,” he explained. “I would say, of the times that I’ve drunk on campus, 75 percent of the time it’s been with my team.”

Betsy, who said she hosted several room parties last year, noted that the threat of getting caught by Public Safety does not deter students from drinking heavily in their dorms.

“The thought of getting in trouble with Public Safety was frightening to us, and so we took precautions by trying to keep the volume down, assigning people to keep a lookout by our room door and the dorm entrance, and devising a plan for how to handle it if Public Safety showed up,” she said. “It never stopped any of us from drinking, high risk or otherwise. I’m not sure it’s stopping anyone else, either.”

She added that it was “hard for her to imagine” a college campus without lots of drinking.

“The stereotype is that college is all about getting away from your parents, partying and having a good time,” she explained. “From my experience, though, I’d have to say that this is unfortunately a campus in which there is a lot of high-risk drinking going on.”

Clair, however, said he thinks it was largely irrelevant to search for specific reasons behind on campus drinking.

“I mean, [we’re] college kids,” he said. “It’s a college campus. There’s going to be drinking.”

Still, when students get sick from drinking, it’s usually because they’ve been pregaming, Mary said, explaining that she does not think the clubs are to blame for on-campus drinking problems.

“Most people who are really, really, really trashed are going to be really, really, really trashed either by the time they get to the Street or it’s afterwards,” she explained. “It’s usually because they started high and kept going.”

Mary said she thought it was “unfortunate” that eating clubs frequently get blamed when intoxicated students are sent to the hospital.

“[The police] will ask the kids what club were you at, and that club will have to go off tap, or that club will have to go through some sort of lawsuit,” she explained. “I don’t really think it’s the club’s fault … if you get really wasted. It’s because you drank too much. It’s not because you were at an eating club.”

Rodriguez, who continued to drink after being sexually assaulted at a club, said that, for her, alcohol consumption turned into a form of “self-medication.”

After Dean’s Date in the spring of her freshman year, Rodriguez was asked to take a year off. Her academic work was suffering because of her drinking, which was exacerbated by the post-traumatic stress disorder she suffered after the assault. She returned to campus in spring 2008 to complete her freshman year.

In spite of all that has happened, Rodriguez continues to drink, though now, she said, she is more responsible.

“When I go out, it’s more like a fun socializing event, and I still drink, but I know what I’m getting into … and I realize that drinking can have bad consequences,” she said. “I’m not using it as a mental outlet.”