UW-Madison has a reputation of being a renowned university academically, both nationally and globally, and attracts students of many different identities, personalities, and backgrounds. We have also obtained a reputation as being a school with a huge party atmosphere and earlier this year the Princeton Review named us the top party school in the nation. While this may be true, in my two years on campus I have met plenty of people who, for a plethora of reasons, choose not to drink.
Living in the dorms can be uncomfortable at times for those who choose not to drink, as they are in close quarters with classmates who may party or make it explicitly clear that they like to drink. These atmospheres are often associated with the Southeast neighborhood dorms, so many students who do not want to drink in excess tend to live in Lakeshore dorms. I, however, have lived in both a small residence hall in Lakeshore and a larger Southeast residence hall and have found instances of partying and drinking in both. Also in both dorms, I have found people who have explicitly expressed being uncomfortable with the permeating binge-drinking culture.
Up until recently, students who choose not to drink had the option of living in a substance-free community in Adams Residence Hall. Unfortunately, not enough people have signed up for this community and it has ceased to exist. Part of the reason why I think not enough people signed up for the substance-free community has been the failure of the university to properly advertise it for incoming and current students—the option wasn’t widely understood, potentially contributing to the lack of interest.
Often times, when I encounter a student who chooses not to drink, they feel they have to explain this choice, which only further shows how deeply ingrained the drinking culture here is. Students who do not drink may feel that they differ from the norm and that others will judge them for not partaking in what is considered common by a large portion of the student body. Also, new students may find it hard to form friendships if many people in their dorm are going out and drinking all the time.
While all residence halls are technically substance-free, anyone who has ever lived in a dorm knows that this is simply not a reality. The truth is that no matter what residence hall you choose to live in, you will encounter students who choose to drink underage. If the substance-free community had been better advertised as a viable option for students, students who don’t drink may have found that there were more people like them than they realized.
Students may have not signed up for the community out of fear that they would have been ostracized and not been able to meet enough people if they isolated themselves in this way. The university and we as students need to do a better job in helping to remove the stigma of non-drinking in a campus that at times seems to be filled with drinking.
While this article is not meant to condemn drinking itself, as it is a reality on most campuses across the nation, more can be done to support students who choose not to drink and to make them more aware that there are plenty of others like them. Again, more of an effort needs to be made to make incoming students aware that living in the substance-free community is a great opportunity to not worry about being judged for not drinking and to meet other students who feel the same way. Removing the substance-free community ultimately does nothing to help alleviate the party atmosphere UW-Madison has been labelled with for years.
Madison is a sophomore majoring in English and communications. Are you impacted by the cancellation of the substance-free housing community? Please send comments and questions to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
