<p>What’s the drinking culture like at Brown?
Prevalent/Common? Uncommon? Frequent?</p>
<p>I’m asking because I heard from some other post that there is actually a lot of drinking going on at Brown, and I read elsewhere that on the weekends, aside from going to Thayer/city, most people have fun by drinking (at parties or in dorms).</p>
<p>And I’m not looking for that “you-can-find-all-types-of-people” talk, and the “nobody will care if you don’t drink,” and the “the drinking is about average compared to other schools,” because those answers really aren’t helpful. I really want to know what’s the general level of drinking going on and how prevalent it is because even if you do hang out with people who don’t drink, if drinking is still prevalent, it still feels a tiny bit exclusionary.</p>
<p>I’m pretty concerned about this because I had a very off-putting college visit during ADOCH (before then I was really enthusiastic about Brown), because I was roomed (as an asian), with two white guys. And there was a white guy with some girls (I think they were prefrosh too?) who were drinking, and then later my host was with two friends and he was kind of drunk. So that was awkward, since I don’t drink, even though they were nice. Unfortunately it really gave me an anti-intellectual feeling about Brown.</p>
<p>@terenc: “I’m pretty concerned about this because I had a very off-putting college visit during ADOCH . . . there was a white guy with some girls (I think they were prefrosh too?) who were drinking, and then later my host was with two friends and he was kind of drunk.”</p>
<p>That is pretty bad publicity for Brown because the ADOCH sleepover was on a Monday night.</p>
<p>My son also spent that night in a dorm room. One roommate had gone to sleep early because he had soccer practice the next morning. The other one stayed up late studying. </p>
<p>I will warn you that ADOCH night is typically considered a party night, because there are so many pre-frosh on campus. Normally, most people would not be drinking on a Monday night.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you about the “prevalent atmosphere,” as I only know what my friends and I do. I typically drink one night out of every two weeks or so, and it’s always a weekend night (Friday or Saturday night). I would say I drank more my freshman year when I was unsure how else to fit in with people, but now we usually have better things to do than drink.</p>
<p>Also, the level of drinking can vary greatly. I’ll have maybe a beer or two. I know people who drink heavily, but they’re in the minority out of the people I know - we tend to drink socially, not with the goal of being drunk. Often, it’s a beer or a glass of wine with dinner that we cook.</p>
<p>There tends to on average be quite a lot of drinking freshman year. Not necessarily more than any other college campus (except “stricter”/religious etc schools) than any of the many varied schools that my student’s HS friends went to, and I would say actually less than the state schools around here. There will be a number of students who don’t drink, or drink very little (including many asian students who find they can’t genetically!) and if it really bothers you, you can elect to live on a sub-free floor where there are likely to be more nondrinkers. However, you will find “your own”, in any dorm, esp if you seek out groups that have social activities that involve more than drinking. (and there are tons of clubs to join). After freshman year, most will “calm down” a bit, find other ways to socialize, and drinking becomes much less of a “big thing”, and I would guess most “serious students” drink much less, and less often. If you are a teetotaler, life will be full of times where drinking is part of the socializing, and college is as good a time as any to learn to be comfortable not drinking when others around you are.</p>
<p>This is a topic which I struggled with before committing to Brown; I was raised in a family in which alcohol was very much discouraged, and having lived in a part of the world where there was legal drinking pre-21, I had been very much put off by some of my high-school peers’ frequent over-drinking. I thus knew I didn’t want to have an alcohol-soaked college experience, and I too feared alcohol at Brown. I can say with 100% honesty that I still don’t consume alcohol ‘recreationally’ and have never been drunk and truly, my social life has been fantastic. To be sure, some of my friends drink more heavily then I, and yet others don’t; Brown is fluid socially (pardon the lame pun), and so I really haven’t found my non-drinking to hold me back at all when it comes to making friends or having a good time. That said, if you’re still worried we do have sub-free floors (“not sub-fun”) as well as even a mostly sub-free literary ‘frat.’ So, retrospectively, this is an issue I worried about way, way more than I needed to.</p>
<p>Also, there is no way I could state the ‘overall’ level of drinking on campus - until I have met everyone in my year any statement I made would be a gross over-generalization. In my friend circle, I probably tends towards the less drinking end of the spectrum, (not a binary! :D), that said, at a school like Brown which places so much trust in its students, personal responsibility is the name of the game.</p>
<p>I think the main issue you have is equating alcohol with anti-intellectualism, which is something you have to learn is really not the case. Brown Health Services conducted a survey a while ago and found that the vast majority of students (something around 70%) who drink, do so moderately and socially (1-4 drinks a night); people don’t suddenly lose their minds after a drink or two. As many others have stated, if you go to Brown, you will see drinking. You will see drunk people. It’s less so around midterm season or around finals, but on a given Friday or Saturday night, a great deal of people drink. </p>
<p>That said, you are under no obligation to participate. I am a non-drinker (though not for any moral reasons). All but one of my friends drink. Does that mean I’m excluded from their activities just because alcohol is involved? Of course not. If you really want to hold something in your hand, drink water or ginger ale or something. As mentioned, sub-free is another option or just hanging out with non-drinkers is fine. </p>
<p>But ultimately, it comes down to the fact that drinking is a PERSONAL choice and your attitude towards others who do/don’t drink should reflect that. Nothing should be awkward when hanging out with people you like, regardless of whether or not alcohol is involved.</p>
<p>The problem is that you consider useful answers useless. I have no idea what “general level of drinking” means, but it doesn’t mean anything that would be useful for you to know in the context of choosing a college. What matters is your ability to find a situation where you feel comfortable and happy, but you’ve preemptively rejected answers relating to that question.</p>
<p>More generally, my basic feeling is this: Many gifted young high school graduates get to college with a ridiculously negative impression of alcohol, resulting from the fact that in many high schools drinking is associated with the ‘bad’ kids. These gifted students head off to college and say to themselves: “Man, all those kids who drank in high school really sucked! I better go into sub free housing to keep away from them!” Then – sometimes very late into their Brown careers – they find themselves in a setting with nothing but people they respect, all of whom are drinking, and they say: “Wait a minute, maybe this isn’t so terrible!” So they drink a bit, don’t die, and live happily ever after as responsible social drinkers. I watched innumerable peers live through this transformation process.</p>
<p>I consider myself lucky; I lived in Europe in high school, and drank socially from the time I was 15. Otherwise, I almost certainly would have been one of those people with a skewed impression of alcohol. While demonizing something that doesn’t deserve demonization might not seem like the end of the world to you, I think it reflects something of a disconnect with reality, and I would have been sad to have that revelation in the middle of college.</p>
<p>Also, I have no idea what race has to do with this. Asian people drink, too.</p>
<p>^as for the asian thing, any more than maybe half a drink and I turn all red and things are very, very unpleasant and uncomfortable. This is very common (50% prevalence) among asians.</p>
<p>I’m just trying to get some opinions about how prevalent alcohol is socially; I’m not looking for people’s opinions of my own opinions. I actually am “okay” with others drinking, it’s just that the “best” situation would be one in which drinking is not prevalent.</p>
<p>^If you’re looking for a “best” situation where drinking is not prevalent, then the “you-can-find-all-types-of-people” thing seems rather relevant.</p>
<p>This hits the nail on the head. Excellent summation. Describes my daughter and all of her high school friends to a T. (And frankly, it describes my college experience, too!)</p>
<p>I also can’t tell you how many parents of gifted HS students describe their non-drinking sons and daughters to me and swear that they will not drink in college either, and how important it is to find the right college environment. I just roll my eyes. (Many parents on CC take this line, too.) Thousands of “good” high school students start drinking when they are in college. Some of them drink responsibly, some of them don’t. The problem is not that they drink – the problem is when students drink excessively, in dangerous situations. One of the nice things about Brown is that students tend to drink with their friends, in their friends’ rooms, which is generally a pretty safe environment. </p>
<p>terenc, there will be drinking at Brown. There is drinking at every college in America, with the exception of the very conservative religious institutions. You will find drunk Asians at every college in America too (I also don’t understand your comment about being Asian and yet being placed with whites during ADOCH – you do realize that your roommate will very likely be white or black – diversity is really important at Brown.) </p>
<p>And when you graduate from Brown, you will find yourself among adults who drink too. </p>
<p>As for how prevalent drinking is at Brown – here’s my sense (and others should correct me if I’m wrong) – Brown students care about their grades, their classes, their ECs. The vast majority have enough work and responsibilities that getting drunk every night is just not possible. Some weekends there will be parties where people are drinking and getting drunk. Some weekends you and your friends might go to a theater production or movies or something else, and there will not be drinking. At some point freshmen year, you will probably stumble across a very scary drunk person at 2 am sprawled out in a bathroom floor. And part of what you are learning by going to Brown (and other colleges) is figuring out how to deal with all of those situations.</p>
<p>And, of course, many of those students who aren’t getting drunk are getting high, instead.</p>
<p>The you-can-find-all-sorts-of-people comment was meant to tell people that I am aware I can find my own niche, not about any desirable quality of Brown.</p>
<p>Because there is some misunderstanding, the comment about being Asian was there because it is very common among Asians to be genetically “allergic” to drinking any more than a half a drink to a drink, something usually only Asians understand.</p>
<p>Anyways, I think I understand the overall prevalence of drinking and don’t think it is going to be a major issue.</p>
<p>Hey, sorry to hear about the negative ADOCH experience. One of the reasons I didn’t do an overnight stay at any of the colleges I thought about applying to is because I was afraid I’d be in a similar situation and it would give me a negative impression of the school for no good reason.</p>
<p>I must say though, lynch112’s description of her son’s ADOCH hosts sounds like how 80% of the people I know at Brown would act on a weeknight. On a weekend, you do get a lot of drinking, especially in your freshman dorm. This made me really uncomfortable for my first semester, because I had a negative view about alcohol and was pretty socially awkward, but I found some people who didn’t necessarily drink every weekend. Or, I hung out with people while they were drinking. Personally, I like how open and accepting Brown is about alcohol. It makes me feel like an adult and not a criminal.</p>
<p>“Personally, I like how open and accepting Brown is about alcohol. It makes me feel like an adult and not a criminal.”</p>
<p>I wonder how much higher Brown’s yield would be if high schoolers (1) appreciated the importance of this issue, and (2) knew that Brown was this way.</p>