Is it the inappropriate behaviors that may occur from it? Or is it the illegal aspect of underage drinking? I think it’s a mix of several factors if you ask me.
Now, I understand that partying has it’s pros & cons, & even though some my posts revolved around partying, it’s not for everyone. Some people would rather stay in, watch a movie, or go out to eat. Furthermore, even going on an “adventure” throughout the mall is still a fun option for some.
Overall, the main focus of college is to get an education. IMO, the administration does a good job of letting their students know that there’s more to life than partying & drinking, & there is: People just have different interests & opinions on partying, & I respect them for following their interests rather than trying to “fit in” with the partiers.
“In general” is a bad start to a discussion. If you want serious debate you would have better success if you start by giving some concrete examples of the ways college “party culture” is viewed as a negative. Opinion pieces, articles, angry emails from your parents, anything other than a vague impression of society.
You’ve already given the general answer in your post, but perhaps that was the purpose? You’ve partied so hard you just felt you needed to counterbalance by sharing a three paragraph college essay with the world?
The college “party culture” is viewed as negative because for some students (especially those who are immature, unfocused, unmotivated, or who haven’t learned how to moderate their behavior), it can lead to them not completing their education and obtaining a degree. This puts them in an even worse situation than if they’d never gone to college, because they then have the debt (which is virtually impossible to erase) without the degree.
Plus, they are now in the habit of frequently partying, which makes it even tougher for them to succeed in the future, whether it’s completing their studies or getting a job.
This. it’s irresponsible. Party culture is a bunch of unsupervised kids spending someone else’s money on ephemeral things.
When I was a freshman, there were like 20 freshmen engineering students on my dorm floor. One and only one graduated in engineering. Most didn’t make it past their first year. I’d love to know what happened to them. Do they look back fondly their time drinking and getting stoned all day?
Some look on party culture as a waste of time and money. I view it as a waste of potential. Some just view it from the “prig” perspective - Why should other people enjoy themselves, when I’m not?
While this is true, for most students going away to college is their first time living away from their parent’s home and being left mostly completely to their own devices in the partially controlled environment of the college campus. In that respect college is not just about an academic education, the forced self-guided social and “adulting” education is arguably just as important. When a young person takes this newfound freedom and independence as a license to act irresponsibly, it’s a concern. That’s not to say partying does not have an appropriate and important place in the college experience, but it can certainly be taken too far.
Let’s see: fights, rape, unintended pregnancy, STDs, dropping out of school, kicked out of school, ER visits, taking longer to graduate, lower GPA, jail, fines, death. I think that about covers it, although I’m sure I probably missed something. Most students manage to avoid all or most of these pitfalls, but not all do.
That said, I don’t think college party culture is viewed entirely as a negative, it’s just a matter of knowing that bad things can happen as a result and therefore making sure you’ve prepared your college-bound kid to know what level is acceptable and how to avoid bad situations.
I think it’s all that stuff, plus a certain recognition from older and wiser folks that maybe newly minted college students aren’t terribly well equipped to function in that particular environment.
I mean, our partying changed significantly between our first year and our last- we didn’t necessarily drink less, but it was more… controlled? Planned? Deliberate? I mean, as a freshman, it was frequently seeing what you could scare up, since booze was (relative to later years) hard to come by, and in varying types and quantities. When we became of age, we tried out a lot of bars and clubs. But by our final year or two, we knew where we liked, and generally speaking, had matured somewhat into a “let’s go dancing/pool playing/hanging out, and get a buzz in the process” instead of “Woo hoo! NO parents! Let’s get supremely wasted and see if we can hook up!”
And after college wasn’t some kind of cessation of partying; it just changed again. It seemed to be more purposeful, for lack of a better word, between work stress and maintaining the bonds of our little friend tribes that we put together.
I’m aware that the following is perhaps an unpopular opinion and paints me as a fuddy-duddy but so be it.
I have always had a value system that considered how I spent my resources (time and money) separating recreation from productive pursuits. I have always felt that the goal is to balance the two properly and recognize when to keep them separate. This inevitably leads me to see those who pursue “party culture” as over-investing their resources in recreation, to the detriment of productive pursuits. Now, of course some individuals have a natural capacity for high levels of engagement in partying, and still being perfectly successful in their productive pursuits (maybe it’s genetic?). However, I suspect that on average they are outliers. So, for me, when I see someone committed to partying, I categorize it as risky behavior. (FWIW I can count numerous good friends in the past who did not make it out of their younger years into productive adulthood (or survive) because of their commitment to pursuing their form of partying.)
I think that previous posters have it covered – it’s not partying, per se, that’s a negative, it’s the fact that (a) many college students decide to prioritize partying over classwork, and wind up with poor grades (and often flunking out), and (b) college partying has a tendency to lead to criminal activity (e.g., battery, rape, destruction of property) and unintended consequences (e.g., unplanned pregnancy, STDs, death or injury from drunken stunts).
I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has had a reputation as one of the U.S.'s biggest party schools for decades – and, when I went there, the legal drinking age was 18. I saw an awful lot of classmates and dormmates get drunk and wasted nearly every night, and most of them didn’t graduate. At the time, the stat we were quoted was that our graduation rate was just under 50% – that is, less than 50% of any given freshman class at Madison wouldn’t graduate from that school, and it was widely known that dropping out due to overindulging in the school’s “vibrant party culture” was a big reason why.
18 year olds, generally speaking, aren’t terribly good at moderation or thinking about long-term consequences of their actions; this is even more the case when they’re suddenly out from under daily parental scrutiny of their actions.
Obviously, going to a few parties doesn’t necessarily lead to negative consequences; the issue with “party culture” at colleges is all about the excesses.
And I think specifically, it’s the younger students who the negativity is aimed at. Few people are getting bent out of shape at the post-college young adult nightlife scenes in a lot of cities, even though there’s just as much booze, drugs and sex as in college.
But the difference is that the post-college set are more mature and experienced. A 25 year old who’s graduated college will have a better handle on how to party than a 18 year old who’s out from under their parents’ thumb for the first time.
That’s why the first year is such a bloodbath at most schools in terms of students failing out- a big chunk of them just go nuts with the freedom and treat the school part of college as a secondary pursuit. Schools with big party cultures just exacerbate that phenomenon.
Indeed. My goddaughter just finished her sophomore year at Illinois State. During her freshman year, she was sharing an overcrowded dorm room with three other girls, two of whom overtly told her that (a) the most important part of college was having fun, and (b) she (my goddaughter) was lame, and “missing out” on what they considered to be the most important part of the college experience, because she was spending most of her evening studying, rather than going out and getting blitzed, like they were.
Not suprisingly at all, both of those girls flunked out of ISU by the end of their freshman years. But, they apparently had fun doing it.
Young kids do dumb things (I was young once). Throw in peer pressure and alcohol and they do very stupid and dangerous things. YouTube is full of videos of people experiencing serious injuries because a drunken group decided to do something dumb.
I’m not sure what party culture means. Two a week. Drunk every night?
The problem is peer pressure. Colleges where the pressure is on someone to get smashed are not going to have the graduation rates of colleges where the pressure is on to do your problem sets, and party after. Like the one I went to.
My daughter went to a college at the very bottom of the party rankings - where fun goes to die. She graduated just fine.
I wouldn’t blame party culture on that. Engineering is a very common freshman major, and most of them just plain old can’t handle the higher math. “Pre-med” is the same way, for that and other reasons.
I was a prof for mumble years and I saw a big change over time.
When I was a student and early on, if a class met at 3/4pm on a Friday, no big deal.
But then students didn’t want to take classes that late on a Friday. Somehow interfered with their partay life.
So saw more MW 1.5 hours afternoon classes instead of MWF 1 hour classes.
But then 1/2pm F was too much of a burden. Then morning F classes were getting in the way.
So this made Thursday another partay night. Well, that meant that 3/4 pm classes on Th were interferring …
It’s just wrong that getting blackout drunk is considered not just acceptable but the norm. People too young to make good decisions are screwing up their life.
But isn’t there going to be some point in a person’s life where he or she first has the freedom to make bad decisions, will not have sufficient maturity to make good decisions, and most (hopefully) gradually learn to moderate their behavior?
We could say that this should be after college or make the age 16, 25, or 30, but at whatever the age, until the person learns, the original times will be marked by immaturity and overindulgence.
Most of my friends my freshman year of college were liberal arts majors who preferred weed to alcohol and were not part of the frat-party type culture, and the majority of them wound up not graduating either! Some went off and did the traveling-hippie thing (or are still doing it) and some just went back home to live with their parents.
