Our status as the No. 1 party school in the nation has been solidified by Playboy Magazine. Woohoo. Go us. 'Work hard, party hard''that's our motto. But instead of celebrating by going out and getting smashed, maybe we should rethink how we spend our free time.
No one reading Playboy will likely realize or remember that we are also the No. 1 school for research. Or that we are one of the top public schools in the nation.
Our reputation as a center of intellectual thought, creativity and liberal-mindedness will most likely not be enough to counter the notoriety and publicity that being labeled the No. 1 party school will bring.
What matters is we know all that still holds, right? But really, one must severely question how intellectual, creative and liberal-minded we can actually be when the majority of students spend all their free time getting drunk.
Most students here will likely never again have the opportunity to be surrounded by so many other people with similar intellectual and studious interests or the top scholars in their fields.
After they leave UW-Madison, most students will never again have so much opportunity for knowledge and growth surrounding them. And instead of taking advantage of this, of all the potential for creativity and unique thinking, students spend all their time partying.
Would it be so bad to spend one night a week socializing without the aid of alcohol? Getting to know the real person you are with instead of a distorted version?
Drinking and partying to excess at Madison is only growing: As one student put it, she wouldn't drink every weekend-night, except that it's all everybody else does. So if she wants to socialize, she has to drink. It's unfortunate that people who don't want to drink or have no interest in it, for whatever reason, find it hard to make friends. They even find themselves looked down on.
As another student expressed, she makes up excuses for not drinking such as being allergic to alcohol, because otherwise people would think she is a freak. No one can say this is very liberal-minded.
Think of what else all our collective energies could be put to instead of keeping our reputation as the No. 1 party school. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night we could volunteer throughout Madison and Dane County. We could become the No. 1 volunteer school in the nation. Instead of the Mifflin Street Block Party, we could have the Mifflin Street 'Donate the Money You Would Have Spent on Booze to a Third-World Country' Block Party. But that would take amounts of compassion, discipline and open-mindedness that the students of Madison are falsely labeled as having.
But even on an individual, self-interested scale, the benefits of drinking and partying less still hold: We at UW-Madison will never have this time of our lives back. Never will we be so young and full of energy. Never will we have all these opportunities at our fingertips. Never will we be so free of responsibility.
And do we want to look back and see that we wasted it in a self-indulgent drunken stupor? Wouldn't it be much more satisfying to know that we at least put some time and energy into the growth of our minds and character?
It will sure be sad to look back on our years here and think of all the intellectual, social and personal opportunities we missed.
