Whether it's romanticized in movies, read in books or seen while walking downtown on State Street, drinking alcohol is a stereotypical norm on many college campuses, including The University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As classes resume this fall, so will many other social events that involve alcohol, such as Badger football tailgates, Lily’s Classic and the Mifflin Street Block Party.
Roughly 47% of UW-Madison undergraduates drink at high-risk levels, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s University Health Services (UHS) website.
Recent UW-Madison graduate Mike Zande told The Daily Cardinal he does not think UW-Madison needs to change its drinking culture.
“Some of my favorite memories came from the [drinking] culture UW-Madison has, and I don’t think those memories would be the same without that [drinking] culture,” Zande said.
This sentiment rings true among other recent graduates like Elena Moore and Seth Petersen, who graduated in 2024. Moore told the Cardinal that while the drinking culture is a defining characteristic of UW-Madison, “to say it’s more unhealthy or counterproductive than at other universities is false.”
“Drinking is a big part of most college cultures, and I think that the drinking culture at this school is just more of a testament to our shared spirit of celebration of hard work and love for the community around us,” Moore said.
Petersen expressed there are opportunities to attend non-drinking events on campus.
“There’s plenty of avenues for people not to drink if they don’t want to, and I think that resources would be better spent educating people on safe drinking than trying to change the culture,” Petersen said.
Each student said drinking culture at UW-Madison has never made them feel unsafe.
UW-Madison’s Police Department’s Downtown Liaison Officer Diego Lema Hernandez told the Cardinal UWPD sees themselves as educators, not just enforcers.
“There is a drinking culture involved with all college students, not just UW-Madison. And will we ever stop underage drinking? No,” Lema Hernandez said. “But what we can do is encourage the safe consumption and the responsible consumption.”
Lema Hernanez said UWPD takes a different approach to policing, which focuses more on behavior. If UWPD sees a student walking out of a bar that cannot carry themselves on their own or looks incapacitated, that can draw concern among officers, leading them to approach the student, he said.
Lema Hernandez said the Medical Amnesty Through Responsible Decisions Program has been a “major success” to UWPD’s approach to underage drinking. This medical amnesty program allows students to call UWPD for medical assistance if their friend is incapacitated from alcohol or drugs without the fear of punitive consequences.
Lema Hernandez said UWPD wants to ensure the safety of students and the UW-Madison community.
“Alcohol tends to be an enhancer for other behavior, whether that’s property crime [or] stealing something that isn’t yours to more serious crimes like fighting or sexual assaults,” Lema Hernandez said. “It’s so concerning to law enforcement to understand that what somebody does with alcohol in their system compared to something they wouldn’t do is staggering.”
The largest challenge UWPD faces is trust from the student body.
“When we talk about underage drinking specifically, students sometimes think that we’re out to get them,” Lema Hernandez said. “The responsibility is up to [students] and if they choose to [drink], now they’re at least more informed of what could happen, instead of being surprised by police contact because they didn’t know.”
