If you've grown up in the last ten years or so, it's pretty much a given that you've watched movies like the "American Pie" series and "Road Trip" (2000). Aside from being generally low budget, raunchy and starring Sean William Scott, these movies all have another aspect in common. They all provide the viewer with an image of what college life is like in the United States. And more often than not, the image ingrained in the viewer is that college will feature a lot of out of control frat parties, complete with a fully stocked bar.
When your high school experience takes place in a country like India or Singapore or even in Europe, what one finds is that today, alcohol is easily accessible. I'm sure most readers have friends who started drinking before they hit their teens and still haven't slowed down. Parties regularly featured bottles and bottles of beer, usually supplemented with BacardiBreezers for those who didn't drink as often. It was common to have to cover up for your friends with their parents, and even more common to have to hold them up as they staggered around, shouting out random inappropriate statements and bursting into fits of laughter. All this was possible because despite the legal drinking age being 18 in most places — and in fact being twenty five in New Delhi — the law is not imposed strictly at all. Cops turn a blind eye provided, the party isn't creating a disturbance, and clubs and bars don't look at IDs. To be honest, I don't think I ever even needed an ID to get in anywhere.
Then you come here for college. And naturally, what one expects, especially because of the movies we've watched or the stories we've heard, is that alcohol will be as easy to access, if not easier than it was back at home. Whilst it still certainly does play a big part in the college life, it's not as central as one would have thought. That's because in the United States, and more specifically in Massachusetts, the legal drinking age is 21, and that law, unlike in various other cities around the world, is very, very strictly enforced. Of course, alcohol is still obtainable. Whether it comes from abroad or through the use of well-created fake IDs, booze is still prevalent on college campuses like ours. But when you come from high school assuming that there will be a much bigger alcohol culture in college, you may actually be mistaken.
Another striking new development is what is known as "pregaming," which, according to UrbanDictionary.com, is "Drinking several alcoholic beverages or using illegal drugs before going to a larger function in preparation of getting toasted." Granted, I haven't been here long enough to really make a learned judgment on the subject, but from what I can make out, it happens a lot at Tufts, simply because there aren't really the opportunities to get "toasted" at the larger functions. The art of pre-gaming was nonexistent — at least at my high school — merely because in Delhi it's totally normal to go to a party, get served a ton of alcohol, and drink to your heart's content without being prosecuted by the Tufts University Police Department. I'm sure it is the same in many other places around the world.
There's a famous saying — I don't know where it came from — "I live for the nights I can't remember, with the people I won't forget." It certainly applied for many in high school. The question to be asked though, is will it apply in college as well?
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AngadBagai is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Angad.Bagai@tufts.edu.
