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Authors: Murray Sperber

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Queries probing the connection between beer and circus on the questionnaire and in interviews for this book prompted this comment from a Purdue senior, and statements from many other students, as well as some revealing numerical results. To the question: “At this school, college sports events are central to the party scene,” males and females responded in almost identical numbers: 64 percent “strongly agree” or “agree”; 10 percent “neither agree or disagree”; and 26 percent “disagree or strongly disagree.” When respondents were divided according to whether they attended a NCAA Division I or Division III institution—the standard separation between schools running big-time college sports programs, and those conducting low-profile, nonathletic scholarship ones—the Division III respondents accounted for almost all of the neutral and “disagree” answers.
In their written responses, undergraduates at NCAA Division III schools provided such comments as, “Only the actual players and their friends party after games,” and “People here wouldn't know how to tailgate if you gave them a demonstration in the stadium parking lot. Then again, we don't have a stadium or a vast parking lot.”
At big-time college sports schools, the written responses from men and women differed, the latter often offering comments similar to the Purdue senior's. A University of Texas female explained,
UT men are ultraserious about college sports and about drinking, but women here tend to take them at face value. We enjoy the thrill and hype associated with big games, but we view sports more as a social opportunity, as a reason to party, not as the center of your life, like my boyfriend and his fraternity brothers do.
A Clemson woman remarked: “Sororities attend football games for the simple pleasures of drinking and tailgating. It seems to be more of an image thing than enjoying the football games themselves.” An Oregon State sophomore woman commented that “it all begins for female students here their
freshmen year. They get caught up in the pre-, the during, and the postgame partying involving college sports games, with alcohol lowering their inhibitions, making it easier for them to meet people and socialize.”
A senior female at North Carolina State distinguished between male and female students at her school: “Women like the party atmosphere around college sports games, but the men are totally into the sports and into the booze. If you write a book from this poll about how men love college sports, you should call it
Big-time College Sports: A Tradition of Boozing and Brawling.
”
Male respondents explained themselves somewhat differently than did the females. An Indiana University male senior commented:
B-ball games here are always sold out, and students often cannot come up with tickets … . But many prefer to watch the games in one of the B-town [Bloomington] bars rather than “the alcohol-free arena.” … Drinking with your [fraternity] brothers is a big part of watching a game and a whole lot better than cheering when dumb-ass cheerleaders tell you to.
For away men's basketball games, often scheduled on weekday nights, large numbers of students pack the bars at Indiana and other big-time college sports schools. A University of Iowa male remarked, “When the Hawks are on the road, the whole [fraternity] house goes down to the Sports Column [a local bar]. An away game during the week is a great time to party. If UI loses, then we drink to forget the loss. If we win, then we sometimes celebrate all night.”
Even at some NCAA Division I schools without powerhouse men's basketball teams, students go to bars to watch college sports events. An Ohio University male junior wrote, “Why go to OU basketball games when we can make the bar scene and watch a
real
college game on ESPN.” Another Ohio U student made a similar remark about not attending OU football games, but instead going to the bars in Athens and “catching top teams and staying warm and drinking with your [fraternity] brothers.”
Some of the male respondents detailed their game-watching rituals, an Iowa senior noting that “if there is an away basketball game, my fraternity brothers and I usually arrive at Mondo's [an Iowa City bar] at least two hours before the game. This assures us of a seat. Then we watch the game, and this translates into another three or four hours of drinking. This does not take into account the amount of partying that goes on long after the game, 'specially if the Hawks win.”
Other students noted the amount of time spent drinking on football
weekends, a Washington State senior commenting: “The day of a football game here is at least a fifteen-hour day of partying—usually until you drop.” However, a more systematic way of assessing the amount of time undergraduates at beer-and-circus schools spend partying is to calculate the totals from the queries on this subject on the questionnaire for this book.
 
 
Question 15
On average, during the school year, how many hours a week do you spend partying—at private functions and in bars—
in conjunction with college sports events
(include time spent arranging the party, traveling to and from the party, and at the party). Try to calculate your daily totals and then add on your weekend total. Mark the appropriate weekly amount.
The totals for men and women differed, as did the numbers from respondents at Division I and Division III schools. From the latter group came most of the low totals, i.e., 22 percent of men and 30 percent of women marked “0 hours per week” spent partying in conjunction with college sports events; and 16 percent males, 18 percent females checked “1–5 hours.” Only a minority of respondents from Division I schools were in those time brackets, but these students dominated the remaining ones: 23 percent males and 28 percent females marked “6–10 hours per week,” and 19 percent males, 16 percent females, “11–15 hours.” After this, almost all females dropped out, only 8 percent spending “more than 15 hours per week” on this activity. However, a cohort of males continued strong, 14 percent at 16–20 hours and 6 percent at “more than 20 hours per week.”
Nevertheless, this is only a partial photo. The numerical responses to the next question, when added to the above one, provide a more complete picture:
Question 16
On average, during the school year, how many hours a week do you spend partying—at private functions and in bars—
NOT
in conjunction with college sports events (include time spent arranging the party, traveling to and from the party, and at the party)? Try to calculate your daily totals and then add on your weekend total. Mark the appropriate weekly amount.
Adding up the numbers on both questions indicate that men outpartied women; thus, females dominated the lower time brackets: 2 percent of
males and 11 percent of females spent “0 hours per week” partying; 10 percent males, 22 percent females, “1–5 hours”; and 11 percent males, 26 percent females, “6–10 hours.” The “11–15 hours” time bracket—39 percent males, 23 percent females—included many men at Division III schools and women at Division I schools. The “16–20 hours” cohort mainly contained men (17 percent) and women (14 percent) at Division I schools. At “21–25 hours,” all but 4 percent of the women dropped out, whereas 15 percent of the men partied on, with another 6 percent of the males continuing “above 25 hours per week.”
In examining these totals, a number of conclusions emerge: many students, particularly at Division I schools, spend far more time partying than they do studying (see Chapter 11 for these numbers); and students at Division I institutions spend more time partying “round the team” than they do at nonsports-related festivities. However, even students at Division III schools devote a fair amount of time per week to partying, usually nonsports related. In addition, the totals parallel the Harvard Public Health and the Center for Science in the Public Interest studies on High Binge and Low Binge schools, and also indicate that although women, particularly at Division I institutions, party a great deal, they have thousands of hours to spend, and oceans of alcohol to consume, before they catch up to male undergraduates at these schools.
 
The above numbers and conclusions provide an abstract indication of the party scene at American colleges and universities, especially big-time college sports schools, but personal comments from students put human faces on the statistics. A senior woman at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, wrote:
Many students party throughout the football and basketball seasons to support the Fighting Illini, completely forgetting their studies. Many of these students develop serious alcohol problems, and as the seasons roll along, so does their substance dependency, and their party nights get closer and closer, particularly if they start hitting the sports bars regularly.
Soon these students lose track of school and they start spiraling out of control. This may seem extreme, but it happens all the time here … . The U of I tries to inform freshmen of these risks, but the drinking culture here keeps producing more student alcoholics. Somehow schools have to get the anti-alcohol message across, but they aren't doing it.
A fraternity house president at the University of Maryland explained how student drinkers can lose control:
I think a lot of people [students] go out with the intention of getting drunk … . I don't think they know that they are binge drinking … . They go out to drink and have a good time with their friends, and, in their minds, they're not doing anything wrong. They feel that they are completely in control, that they are on top of the situation. They don't consider that they are actually doing something which is quite a problem and could lead to some very dangerous things.
Probably the University of Michigan students at Scorekeepers had similar rationalizations and feelings of omnipotence when, while observing the passed-out woman on the floor, they kept ordering more drinks. The U of M students, like their counterparts across the country, believed that they personally were immune from the effects of alcohol poisoning. No doubt the passed-out woman shared this belief.
“Drinking in college is all an elaborate game,” said an Indiana University fraternity member. “And we get so wound up in it that we completely lose sight of the bigger picture. It's like we've never heard of human physiology. I've taken [fraternity] brothers turning blue to the E.R.” This student then detailed the “elaborate game”: how his fraternity built a special “keg room” in its house basement so that the members could hide beer kegs and cases during raids by the dean of students and the police; how it arranged for false IDs for pledges; how it rented houses off-campus as “party centrals”; how the “game” consumed enormous amounts of undergraduate time and energy; and how winning the game—“drinking until you puke and pass out … finally didn't make a whole lot of sense.”
The IU student added, “At least I try to go to the Rec Center [recreational gymnasium] to work off my hangovers. I try to spend as much time there as I do in the bars.” This comment connects to one of the most intriguing conclusions of the Harvard and Center for Science in the Public Interest studies on binge drinking: students who frequently play intramural sports, who exercise, and also engage in superfan activities, often binge drink. In one respect, this seems contradictory: people who work out regularly and respect their bodies usually do not poison themselves by consuming too much alcohol. However, in reality, the beer-and-circus subculture has a large participatory component, not only in actively drinking and cheering for one's team, but in playing sports and exercising. The results to the following question confirmed this:
On average, during the school year, how many hours per week do you spend in athletic activities (intercollegiate athletic training and games, intramurals, jogging, aerobics, exercising, etc.)? Try to calculate your daily totals and then add on your weekend total. Mark the appropriate weekly amount.
The intercollegiate athletes—8 percent of the female and 5 percent of the male respondents—immediately identified themselves by marking “more than 30 hours per week,” significantly higher than all other students (some of the college athletes added in the P.S. section that they spent 40, 50, sometimes 60 hours per week in their sports). At the other extreme were 6 percent females and 3 percent males who spent “0 hours per week … in athletic activities.”
Over a third of the students—38 percent females, 36 percent males—marked “1–5 hours.” Undergraduates at Division III schools dominated this time bracket, whereas many students at Division I institutions marked “6–10 hours”: 33 percent females, 42 percent males. Written and interview comments revealed that in the “1–10 hour” range, women tended to exercise, and men played on intramural and pickup teams in various sports. In the “11–20 hour” range, both women (12 percent) and men (14 percent) worked out
and
played on intramural teams. In addition, many women and some men regarded the exercise areas, jogging tracks, and swimming pools of their school's recreational facilities as “social scenes,” “pickup areas,” and “great places to meet people.” Finally, the numbers indicate how much time supposedly busy college students spend in the gym as well as in other sports related activities (see Chapter 10 for the numbers on sports spectatorship). An Arizona State male senior remarked:

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