The drinking habits of typical SMU students were profiled in Saturday’s Dallas Morning News. According to research conducted by SMU itself, 63 percent of SMU students consume five or fewer drinks in a typical week. One in three students said that they don’t drink in a typical week. The majority of students have never used a fake ID to purchase drinks. Two out of three SMU students have never been negatively affected by a student’s drinking.
There are several reasons why the members of the editorial board believe these numbers are somewhat inaccurate. First, a student approached by a university-sponsored researcher is unlikely to come right out and say, “Of course I have more than five drinks a week.”
The second reason has to do with a common misconception touched on in the article: the belief that one must drink in order to fit in at SMU. According to first-year Robin Barker, this belief caused him to get drunk on his first night of college and subsequently led to his efforts to help start the advertising campaign that conducted the research mentioned above.
Incredibly, the belief that one must drink in order to fit in at SMU seems well founded, especially to an impressionable prospective student who simply wants to make friends his or her first day. SMU is no. 19 on the Princeton Review’s list of party schools, and no. 11 on the “lots of hard liquor” list. The well-established greek scene encourages partying and drinking, no matter what image the community would like to portray. The Green Elephant is virtually an institution among SMU students. And first-year students who need a fake ID can take a half-hour trip off-campus or often simply ask around their residence halls.
As long as students believe that they must drink in order to fit in at SMU, they will drink. This problem cannot be solved by trying to convince ourselves and the outside world that students here do not drink, because that is simply not true. And short of making it an enrollment requirement that students remain alcohol-free, nothing is going to keep first-years from drinking. Instead of denying that there is a problem, this university needs to accept that alcohol will always be here, and concentrate instead on teaching first-years and returning students about responsible drinking.
