COMMENTARY: Why Must College Students Party Till They Drop?

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Why are college students drinking and drugging themselves to death? Truth be told, it’s not just college-age folks who think they need to be anesthetized to face reality. Some students in high school and even grade school “experiment” to the point of unconsciousness or death. I don’t need to […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Why are college students drinking and drugging themselves to death? Truth be told, it’s not just college-age folks who think they need to be anesthetized to face reality. Some students in high school and even grade school “experiment” to the point of unconsciousness or death.

I don’t need to repeat the statistics here. Too many young people in too many towns are on a substance-abuse marathon toward death.


Often the combination is alcohol or drugs with cars. Or weapons. Or window ledges. Or busy highways. And too many school cultures encourage the stupidity.

The Princeton Review, a test preparation company that also publishes guides to colleges, recently released its list of the nation’s 366 best colleges and universities. Among them, it named the top 20 “party schools” _ campuses where it seems you can find whatever you want whenever you want it. (Schools also were ranked for the quality of campus dining, living, sports and Greek life, among other factors. And to be sure, it’s possible to get a good education at any of the party schools without spending four years on the set of “Animal House.”)

Nonetheless, parents might want to have a chat with students headed to any of these: West Virginia University, Penn State University, Indiana University (Bloomington), Ohio University (Athens), Randolph-Macon College, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), Arizona State University, Florida State University, the State University of New York (Albany) and the Universities of Mississippi, Texas (Austin), Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, California (Santa Barbara), Iowa, Maryland (College Park), Tennessee (Knoxville), Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and Alabama (Tuscaloosa).

Katie O’Hara, a 22-year-old senior at West Virginia, told the Associated Press her school is No. 1 because “no matter what kind of party you want it’s here _ bars, fraternities, house parties. … If you want to take shots all night, there’s a bar; no matter what you want to do, it’s there.”

Katie, that is ridiculous. It is not a rite of passage. It is not part of growing up. It is arrogantly stupid behavior that wastes your tuition and taxpayers’ money (most of the top 20 party schools are publicly supported institutions). And, Katie, such stupidity can get you killed.

The Princeton Review also issued a “stone-cold sober” list. Not surprisingly, it is crowded with evangelical institutions, technical schools and military academies. There is one Catholic institution: Thomas Aquinas College.

Thomas Aquinas College, or “TAC” as it’s known, is a tiny liberal arts school sitting quietly between the agricultural town of Santa Paula and the upscale resort village of Ojai in California. In many respects, TAC is a throw-back to the 1950s, both scholastically and religiously. Its curriculum reflects the Great Books movement, which began at Columbia University in the 1920s, extended to the University of Chicago in the 1930s, and later spawned similar programs across the country.


Thomas Aquinas is clearly a Catholic school, and more conservative than most. If its curriculum is mid-20th century, its “attitude,” if you will, toward Catholicism and culture seems vaguely ’50s as well. Men and women reside in separate dorms. Students may not live off campus except with their families. There is no married student housing.

The results are perhaps predictable: Nearly 5 percent of Thomas Aquinas College’s 1,700 graduates are priests or women religious, with a substantial concentration in the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ, Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and Dominican Sisters of Nashville.

What are the Catholic alternatives?

There are a number of Catholic schools among The Princeton Review’s 366 “best,” although Loyola College in Maryland and Providence College (Rhode Island) also make the “lots of hard liquor” list. Fordham University is noted mainly for its bad food. Notre Dame, on the other hand, is described as virtually marijuana free, and the review says you won’t find a drink at Xavier University in New Orleans.

Some others among the 366 “best”: Bellarmine, Boston College, Catholic University of America, Creighton, Dayton, Duquesne, Fairfield, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Holy Cross, the Loyolas in New Orleans and Chicago, Loyola Marymount, Marist, Marquette, Sacred Heart, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Scranton, Seattle, Seton Hall, Siena, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, St. Louis, St. Mary’s College of California, St. Michael’s, St. John’s (New York), St. Lawrence, Villanova, and Xavier (Ohio).

That is a pretty respectable showing. Conservative or liberal, Catholic schools are typically sane places for young folks to live and grow as adults free of substance stupor, and to learn to be productive members of society.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)


KRE/LF END ZAGANO850 words

A photo of Phyllis Zagano is available via https://religionnews.com.

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