In her recent column “On alcohol,” President Tilghman suggested that dangerous drinking will remain a problem until students stop thinking that “drinking oneself into a stupor that is potentially life-threatening” is cool. This leads to a more obvious question: How the hell did anyone at Princeton ever come to think of such heavy drinking as cool? The answer, in part, is Bicker.
Certainly, Princeton isn’t the only school where heavy drinking is an issue. (Rider University is just down the street.) But we’re far from perfect. Fifty-three percent of students surveyed by The Daily Princetonian said that they had drunk enough to throw up, which means one of two things: Princetonians have either strong gag-reflexes or dangerous drinking habits.
The survey contained some other unsurprising numbers. Fraternity and sorority members are more than twice as likely as non-members to have “blacked out,” and bicker-club members were nearly 1.5 times as likely as sign-in-club members to drink “several times a week.”
Because of the unreliable nature of the survey — response bias could heavily influence the results — I am not so much interested in the numbers themselves as I am interested in the trends that they reveal. The notion that Greek and bicker-club life is soaked in beer and spiced with liquor is commonly accepted. The suggestion that this campus’ most hardcore (read: dangerous) drinkers are in these organizations is not news.
Certainly, Greek organizations’ and bicker clubs’ reputation for drinking can be explained away by claiming that students are self-selecting into these organizations. But self-selection can’t explain it all. I would be hard-pressed to find a student who drank more or more dangerously in high school than they do in college. And, it’s not like high school parties were dry.
So, how does an undergrad change from one who enjoys drinking to one who enjoys high-risk drinking? Most Americans have a one-word answer: college. At Princeton, we can be a little more specific and point to Bicker as a major factor. Every campus has social pressure to drink; only Princeton has so proudly institutionalized and named it.
Most students use the term Bicker to refer only to the high-stakes ritual taking place this week. In truth, the Bicker process can take as long as the first year-and-a-half of college. The stakes are high because the participants perceive them as very public, very harsh (no one wants to be called “hosed”) and consequential (underclassmen believe it can increase or decrease their social status as well as separate them from their friends).
Bicker is also a social ritual. For freshman and sophomore year, underclassmen socialize with upperclassmen in an effort to build a social network that will guarantee them entrance into a club. Fraternities and sororities, closely associated with bicker clubs, serve as the institutionalized versions of this network. I don’t doubt that many students are forming genuine friendships. Yet, there is an element of social climbing. For example, the interest in befriending or sleeping with a club president is sometimes not only guided by the fact that he or she is a great friend or lover. Self-interest, as well as friendship, is a factor when Greek organizations promote their own members for club officerships.
Bicker is high stakes and social — fertile ground for peer pressure. Add liquor, and you’ve got a Princeton party. The Street as a whole glorifies those who can drink the most and party the hardest. For example, one of only two ways to gain a permanent spot on the guest list of every club is to join the 21 Club, whose sole purpose is to encourage its members to drink heavily. The pressures to conform to this heavy-drinking ideal — or any ideal, for that matter — is greater at bicker clubs because the social pressure is higher. If many members of a sign-in club don’t like you, you can still sign in. Not so for bicker clubs. Greek organizations are social pressure-cookers because many students rely on older fraternity or sorority members to push for them during Bicker. The result, as we have seen, can be a blackout, or worse.
Of course, not all members of bicker clubs are heavy drinkers, and some sign-in club members like a good drunken soaking as well. But, “drinking culture” isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a real factor that induces undergraduates to high-risk drinking. It’s time to admit the obvious truth: Bicker is a major contributor to Princeton’s drinking culture.
Adam Bradlow is an anthropology major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at abradlow@princeton.edu.
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