Present Day Drinking Culture

There are significant differences in how students at Clemson University go about their drinking in the present day as compared to previous decades. While drinking culture itself may not have changed much in the time since the 1990s, the ways in which the university are going about keeping students safe has been changing in the recent years. As of the year 2018 it was reported that 46% of first-year Clemson students had not drank an alcoholic beverage in the past month, which was a much higher percentage than had been reported nearly 30 years prior. The fact that more students in 2018 and onward are being more responsible with their drinking shows a positive change that can be attributed partly to the university’s efforts to better educate students and keep them safe. Another potential reason for this rise in safer drinking practices could be the emergence of video recording devices and the ease with which you can now be recorded doing any number of embarrassing things while drunk. This potential for being recorded was touched on by each person who I interviewed for the project, and it is something that must be taken into account by present-day Clemson students when they decide to drink. This is why I believe that even though the culture of heavy drinking at the school has not changed, the attitudes that surround drinking have had to change due to the evolving landscape surrounding drinking while enrolled.

            Just as there was in previous decades, currently at the college there is a portion of the student body who choose not to take part in drinking alcohol regardless of whether or not they are of legal drinking age. It is in the opinion of most students that I interviewed for this research that there isn’t much pressure to drink simply to have fun and fit in.[i] While interviewing Kyle Burke, a current senior marketing major at Clemson University he mentioned on numerous occasions how he has never felt pressure to drink by those around him. This goes hand in hand with the statistic gathered by Clemson University in the Spring of 2014 that stated 21% of all students had not consumed alcohol in the past year. The fact that over 20% of the student body chooses not to drink shows that there is more to do at the college than drink. Those in school now appear to show less animosity towards those who go to events and choose to drink non-alcoholic beverages, an attitude that has changed for the better in past decades.

[i] “Interview with Kyle Burke”