Written by Isabella McShea
During my first block at Colorado College, I watched a friend surrounded by EMTs get taken to the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. Throughout this extremely unfortunate ordeal I felt as if I was in a daze. How was this happening?
My own opinion of CC before I got to school was that it had a reputation of Chacos, the Block Plan, and doing homework in a hammock on the quad. My perception as an incoming first-year student was that CC had parties only available a day or two a week for students who choose to seek them out. CC was not what I would consider a “traditional party school.” We don’t wake up at 5:30 a.m. to begin tailgating for football games, and the entire social scene doesn’t revolve around Greek life. All of the preconceptions about CC’s party culture came crashing down as I witnessed firsthand the dangers associated with partying in college.
This experience, coupled with discovering the legendary Block 1 and 8 senior calendar—which provided multiple party opportunities every night of our first few weeks of being on campus—caused me to pause and reflect on the CC party culture as a whole. It seems that because CC is not a traditional party school, students may believe that parties here are almost completely safe to attend. Contrary to popular belief, there can be consequences for those in our community who choose to participate in the party culture. To prevent the negative side effects of partying, education concerning drinking, drugs, sex, and other topics should be integrated into the New Student Orientation and throughout all four years of CC, instead of just limited to an online course before students even step on campus.
This false sense of security we experience while going out is due to a number of factors. One particularly glaring reason is that because we are in the bubble of our campus and because the administration is seemingly relaxed about partying, we can perceive our surroundings as being incredibly safe. Yes, students do register off-campus parties and campus security does come to make sure things are not completely out of control; we even have a policy where each party should, technically, have at least one sober host. There seems to be little to no intervention outside of those aspects on the part of the administration to control the house parties that dominate the party scene. When students have only a small concern of campus safety or the administration, it allows people to feel encouraged to “go out,” instead of fearing any repercussions.
From my early and unfortunate involvement with alcohol poisoning, I can attest that CC is not exempt from the dangers that many colleges face concerning drinking. As the “I don’t pay $60,000 not to get my stomach pumped” party theme on the senior calendar suggests, there is a prevalent drinking culture on our campus. Because of the legality of marijuana in Colorado, this may have surprised some first-years who assumed the prevalence of drinking would be lessened because of the “stoner” reputation that CC and all colleges and universities in Colorado may receive.
Obviously, I was naive to think that our party culture was incredibly low-key and not at all “turnt:” full of ragers, incredibly vibrant, and also just super fun. I have loved dressing up in flair and dancing the night away to a live band with my friends. However, I am still startled by the overarching sense of safety that our campus feels when going out. Implementing more extensive education concerning partying could hopefully lower the amount of students who are hospitalized for drug or alcohol abuse. The current education concerning partying is limited to an online course titled “Think About It,” that many incoming students pay little attention to. In fact, I remember a conversation during NSO where a fellow incoming first-year informed me that they had muted the site and clicked through the various modules. Our campus is relatively safe; however, that is no excuse for not wanting improvement.