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Alcohol: A Blessing and Curse for Cornell Relationships

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Cornell Unzipped

Cornell Unzipped

Now, this may come as a shock, but here in the frozen Ivy League depths of Cornell, we don’t exactly have the same college experience as our friends over at schools like Indiana, Miami or Arizona State. While we’re working on problem sets in office hours or studying for our next prelim in Mann Libe, other members of our generation get to tan by the pool, barbeque at sunny football tailgates or even just wear tank tops without worrying about frostbite. For them, it seems there are unlimited opportunities to party, while for us, come winter time and prelims, it’s goodbye fruity cocktails, hello Uris Library Cocktail Lounge.

Since we don’t party as often, when we do go out, we do as the boys who are not-so-well-endowed: we overcompensate. Rather than casually sipping beer out of plastic red cups, the scholarly intellectuals of Cornell down shots, chug from funnels and do keg-stands. While wine tours, Home­coming and Slope Day are practically holidays to us because we get to spend the day drunk off our overworked asses, to our friends at the University of South Carolina, every day is Slope Day.

Our comparatively infrequent party opportunities also differ from those of students at other colleges in that ours essentially revolve around alcohol consumption. Whether it’s going on wine tours (I’m still recovering from mine this weekend) or just going out, the truth is that there’s not much for us to do other than get drunk. It’s too cold to really be outside, so all of our partying has to be inside where, let’s see … we can, um, drink … and dance — well actually geeky Cornellians aren’t really known for their exceptional dancing — so we can drink … and we can hook up with each other and we can … um, drink.

Whether it’s pregaming, “partying” or attending after-hours, Cornell students spend a big part of their social time drunk. Consequently, alcohol can have a major impact on our relationships. Guys cheat on their girlfriends, girls hook up with other girls and people hook up with people they would ordinarily not even sit next to on the TCAT.

So, why do we drink so excessively? It’s not like you need binge drinking to have a good time — personally I’m good after one shot and a gin and tonic chaser. But, myself included, college students tend to overdo it from time to time (read: Thirsty Thursdays). Why do so many of us put ourselves in situations that can lead to relationship troubles in the first place? Why do smart Cornellians like us choose to drink to the point of blacking out on entire evenings or peeing on street corners?

Author and psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud basically sums up college students’ alcoholic lives when he says, “We all need love during the younger years of our lives. This hunger for love is so powerful that when we don’t find it in relationships with other people, we look for it in other places, such as in food [don’t deny it Cornell, you’ve all heard of the freshman 15], in work [speaks for itself], or drinking too much.”

It would be nice to think that this need kind of dissipates once you’ve crossed into that ever-coveted territory of matrimonial bliss, and that once you’ve found a significant other your alcoholic tendencies get, well … distilled. We’d like to believe that the second the void is filled, we can focus less on our work, drink less and just relax more.

And in some ways that’s true. There’s definitely less of a need to go out when you’re in a relationship. You’ve found a person you can have fun with just by being together, and the physical stuff is essentially guaranteed. So, going out and getting wasted to the point of insanity just seems unnecessary.

But fewer things are scarier to college kids than the notion that their life is set, that they can’t go out with their friends or that there’s no reason to party. In or out of relationships, we all still try to maintain our social lives. Even if you’ve got a boyfriend, girlfriend, or both if you’re pulling a Tila Tequila (VH1’s Shot at Love star), there are certain events at Cornell, Halloween for example, that practically mandate going out, and, by association, drinking heavily.

It’s not that I don’t get it. Admittedly, it’s a bit strange to see the same kids I saw studying in Olin in the morning dancing on the tables of Johnny O’s at night. But we work hard at Cornell, and sometimes we just need a release. The relationship problems that come with alcohol should be accepted as such. But we shouldn’t be doing things that hurt anyone, ourselves or people we care about. Medical amnesty aside, if that’s a persistent issue, I’ve heard that the BASICS program at Gannett can be enlightening. Either way, alcohol can be both a curse and a blessing to relationships. Yeah, it helps us loosen up (I myself am guilty of taking a pre-date shot while making him wait the standard 10 minutes), but it’s a problem when your drunken stupidity actually hurts someone.

We have to think of alcohol less as an activity and more of … a social lube. Drinking is part of the means to having a good time, and not the end. There’s already a very blurry line between college student and alcoholic, and that line can be drunkenly stumbled across the second it becomes that end. Our relationships don’t have to suffer from alcoholism as long as we can accept that alcohol is supposed to facilitate our fun, not constitute it. We’re supposed to pregame for the “game” and not the other way around.

We’re Cornell students — not college graduates — which means we still get to be stupid sometimes. But, we didn’t come to Cornell because we were looking for a party school — and that’s not a bad thing. We don’t have to overcompensate to have a good time. Drinking is supposed to add to the fun we have, but our fun doesn’t have to revolve around it entirely. We can use alcohol to help us relax, dance better and lower our standards to more attainable partners. I’ll say the same thing I’d tell any guy with a short … coming. It’s not the size of the shot that matters, it’s how you use it.

Nikki Nussbaum is a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at nnussbaum@cornellsun.com. Cornell Unzipped appears alternate Mondays.

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