How drunk do you get on the average? Are you a recreational
drinker or a binge drinker? Are you drunk right now? If these
questions sound familiar to you, then you are one of the lucky
1,000 undergrads who received a UCLA student drunkenness survey in
the mail recently.
I know because I was lucky enough to have been scientifically
chosen and just in time for this week’s column. With each
survey completed, we get closer to answering that eternal question:
How drunk is UCLA?
A question UCLA wants to know, in part to answer a related
question: How drunk should we allow it to be?
Before these ancient noodle-scratchers can be shelved next to
the meaning of life, we have to discuss what being drunk actually
is. I’ve never really tried defining it, but if we go by the
California blood-alcohol DUI threshold (.08 for anyone concerned),
depending on your weight and time period of intake, it takes
roughly four drinks before you’re officially twisted, and if
busted driving, officially screwed.
This, oddly or not, perfectly mirrors the highly unscientific
yet widely accepted UCLA dorm axiom ““ four or more and
you’re on the floor. Using roughly the same formula, the UCLA
survey says five drinks gets you to the corner of Binge and
Drunkenness.
Some of you know this corner well. You might have lost your
glasses or front tooth at your last fistfight there, or experienced
an (un)wanted sexual encounter.
In doing research for this column, I measured the progression of
my drunkenness on a tape recorder ““ after drink 12, I stopped
clocking in and lost count (the last thing recorded was “OK,
gravity is becoming challenging!”). In fact, I got into a
street fight and actually lost my glasses.
And this is the concern. Not my glasses or drunkenness per se.
“The reality is drinking is normative. Students are going to
drink. Adults drink,” said Kristen McKinney, the UCLA liaison
for the second annual UC system-wide study. “What we’re
concerned with is that when students are drinking, which they are
going to do, they minimize the harm to themselves and to
others.” The problems, as we all know, start at the binge
point.
According to the study from last fall (the current survey is due
out this spring), 26 percent of undergrads had five or more drinks
in one sitting in the last two weeks. The latter fact translates to
roughly 6,686 binge-drinking undergrads lurking around the campus
nursing mild to severe hangovers at any given time in the last two
weeks.
Compared to the national average in undergraduate binge
drinkers, which is at 50 percent, UCLA isn’t much of a party
school.
Is this is a good thing? Based on conversations I had with
students in the local bars, yes and no. Yes because it reflects the
virtuous (conservative) nature of the student populace. In other
words, we didn’t work so hard to get into this prestigious
institution just to “party.”
But bad because to drop below 20 percent, according to Megan
Brennan, former UCLA undergrad, current social welfare grad student
and former cocktail waitress at Maloney’s, is to dangerously
toe the threshold of terminal snootiness ““ think Ned Flanders
University.
But the bigger question is whether UCLA should engage in
“environmental intervention.” As opposed to personal
intervention, this paternalistic tactic would try to limit the
accessibility of alcohol to undergrads by discouraging local liquor
outlets from cheap drink specials like a happy hour, and
encouraging designated driver incentives like free soda.
According to McKinney, UCLA has not yet tried doing this, but
thanks to a 1989 local law that implements the kind of paternalism
UCLA could engage in, Maloney’s does not have a happy
hour.
One of the students whom I spoke with, Danilo Cabrera, a
fourth-year political science student, said he agrees with
preemptive freedom of binge prohibitions. “For a lot of kids,
college is their first time away from home. It’s complete
freedom, and I’ve seen students who drink their first beer,
just go with it, and keep drinking and ruin their whole
lives.”
Brennan counterattacked with, “They’re in the real
world, that’s how it is. You’re not helping them by
keeping them sheltered.” A bar fight almost broke out but I
held her back.
I agree with Brennan. UCLA should stay out of my drinking, and
I’ll keep my drinking out of UCLA. We have to be treated like
adults, and be allowed to drink too much, get into fights, and even
ruin our lives if that’s what we’ve decided to do. To
that end, the Westwood Brewing Company has happy hour seven days a
week from 3 to 6 p.m.
Lukacs is a third-year history student, and if you want to
buy him a drink or fight him for a beer, you can contact him at
olukacs@media.ucla.edu.