Party (ir)responsibly

Because I’m a freshman, Little 500 week has been a source of bewilderment and excitement since school started in August (and even before that).

Between the partying, the concerts and the bike race (yes, there is a bike race), there is an incredible social buzz around this event and the coming week.

One of the elements of this, though, is the fact that this week is a school week. There are still classes, as a general rule. Although, yes, some professors do cancel class because they don’t see the point in showing up if nobody else does.

At Indiana, it is pretty damn impossible to make the weekend any more inebriated than it already is. The obvious solution: drink all week.

The social understanding is that Little 500 is a time to skip school and party all day, all night and all week. Ignore the burdens of the real world because those problems will still be there during dead week.

Why, though, are freshmen planning on the classes that they are going to ditch based on how empty they think they are going to be? How do freshmen know exactly what is going to happen when it is their first experience with the event?

It is absolutely absurd for students to be avoiding their obligations because of what they have heard might happen during the week. The concept of ditching class had to have started at one point, but it is perpetuated through the spreading of the social “standard” that school is secondary to getting smashed during this week.

I am not a proponent for sitting in the library and studying the whole week because the Little 500 is the culmination of what makes Indiana University such a unique and fun environment to go to school. But doing it in a way that doesn’t completely jeopardize the rest of the school year is just as important.

Not to throw the greek system under the bus, but those involved have even more of a stigma associated with the necessity to party even harder than their “GDI” friends. The concept of the darty (a “day party” for those of you who are not caught up on your binge-drinking lingo) is only one more of the reasons why students are feeling the pressure to be perpetually hammered.

The worst part is that the school has little reason to do anything about the excessive drinking. Little 500 is not only a draw to visit Bloomington during April but also to get students to attend the University. This means that there is no incentive to prevent the drinking because it might also lose the appeal of attending the school. So the drinking culture continues not only despite the lack of action by the school but quite possibly because of it.

I’m not necessarily telling readers not to drink. That isn’t my place.

I’m just saying don’t be stupid. If you can do that all while hitting the sauce, go for it, but if you can’t, it is time to make some decisions.

­— azoot@indiana.edu