Drinking patterns rub off on college students

By JORDON POGRANT
The Manifest Staff Writer

For many Wisconsin residents, the issue of alcohol consumption is all too familiar.
After all, it was the Dairy State that recently topped the charts with having the highest rates of binge drinkers in the United States while simultaneously having the highest percentage of traffic fatalities involving a drunk driver. In 2006, that number climbed to a staggering 42 percent in Wisconsin and claimed 305 lives.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise, seeing as Wisconsin serves the cheapest beer and alcohol throughout the nation in nearly 18,000 bars statewide. In fact, just south of Green Bay - the city of Appleton, Wis. with a population of 70,000 - has more bars than much larger cities such as Sacramento, Calif. and Memphis, Tenn.
As if the horrific statistics are not startling enough, the extended reach of alcohol-related problems on underage individuals, specifically college students, is shocking. Just like the state drinking problem, it seems the alcohol issues are ingrained within Wisconsin college students as well. Within the same state that holds the worst rank for most drinking categories, 24 percent of the population has had their first drink before the age of just 13. The trend continues, not only in the state, but across the nation. In the United States over two out of every five college students are binge drinkers, that is, at least five drinks in a row by men and four drinks in a row by woman, on at least one occasion in the previous two weeks. These figures turn deadly, as over 1,700 college students each year lose their lives to alcohol-related causes.
Though these numbers are shocking, they are compromised from a national average. Such drinking problems couldn’t possibly exist within the small UW-Marinette community, right? Wrong. In fact, a recent informal survey taken by 25 students on the Marinette campus showed that 35 percent of the students are binge drinkers - just under the national average of 40 percent.
Perhaps the reason that drinking rates are high within colleges including UW, is because it feels like the thing that one is supposed to do.
“I mean, when you’re a freshman in college, it’s kind of expected of you,” said Caitlyn Lock, a sophomore at the UW-Marinette. “It’s the norm, plus it’s the easiest way to go out and have a good time.”
College drinking very well may indeed be a fun and easy thing to do, and often expected, but also at times overdone.
That is not to say that every college student partakes in high risk drinking, as many do not.
“I don’t drink a whole lot for a bunch of reasons,” said an anonymous sophomore at UW. “I have had some family and friends who struggled with alcohol, and I feel like I can just find a lot better things to do with my time than get trashed,”.
Whichever the reason, college drinking has become a major issue not only in large four-year colleges, but also small community colleges such as UW. While not everybody joins in on the dilemma, 35 percent of a student body being classified as binge drinkers may be something to think about.
It may be time that college students re-evaluate the ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality.