Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard by Ven Thomas Vander

Author:Ven, Thomas Vander [Ven, Thomas Vander]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

“I Got Your Back”: Intoxication, Fistfighting, and Social Support

The college drinking scene can be a dangerous place. While most of the high-profile, tragic stories about “drinking-related” deaths and injuries involve self-inflicted harm (e.g., fatal alcohol poisoning), heavy drinkers inflict damage on others as well. According to sociologist George Dowdall, researchers have demonstrated that over a typical year, scores of college students are assaulted by other students who have been drinking.23 Furthermore, on the basis of their analysis of a nationally representative sample, Wechsler and Wuethrich found that 11 percent of non–binge drinking students reported being pushed, hit, or assaulted by others while at school. While informative, these data tell just part of the story. Figures like those stated above divorce the drinking-violence relationship from its social context. Most assaults, that is, cannot be fairly characterized as a random attack of a drunken student on a sober one. Wechsler and Wuethrich hint at this when they state that “heavy drinkers were themselves more likely to be victimized by a fellow intoxicated student.”24 Thus it is more likely that most “alcohol-related assaults” are the product of a physical confrontation between two intoxicated aggressors. Though some acts of drunken victimization may be unprovoked, it is likely that inebriated students usually work together to set the conditions for physical confrontation. Furthermore, many of the injuries associated with intoxicated fighting result from interested bystanders jumping into the fray. Before we get to student accounts of the social nature of drunken fighting, let’s explore a neglected topic. Specifically, why do drunken students fight?

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