IT is 10:30 a.m., two hours before the Florida Gators will kick off to Ole Miss, and Max, a 19-year-old freshman, is laboring to explain how he feels about the drinking age.
“Per-son-al-ly,” he says, punching out each slurred syllable, “I do agree the age should be lowered. It will cut down on binge drinking.” He throws an arm around a fraternity brother. “But we take care of each other. We will not let anyone drink under the influence.” He pauses. “I mean drive under the influence. I’m sorry. I’m drunk already. It’s been a long morning.”
Max and his brothers are pre-gaming. A dozen of them strut about the courtyard of their house on the University of Florida’s Fraternity Row, each nursing a cold beer in a foam hugger. A Frisbee flies as Jimi Hendrix blares from the loudspeakers.
The only thing unusual about this day’s pre-gaming is that it actually precedes a game. In the two decades since the legal drinking age was raised to 21, the term has come to encompass any rapid consumption of alcohol in private before venturing out to venues where drinking may not be possible.
This assumes that alcohol is readily available to underage college students, which of course it is. As ever, older students provide liquor to friends who are younger, and fake I.D.’s remain as pervasive on campus as sweatpants.
Though college drinking levels have declined slightly from peaks in the early 1980s, surveys find that more than 8 in 10 college students drink and that 4 in 10 are binge drinkers (meaning that in the previous two weeks a man had consumed at least five drinks in a sitting, or a woman four).
Here in Gainesville, binge drinking remains ritualized behavior for many of the 51,000 students, even as admission to the university has become increasingly selective. Whether or not the university deserves its Princeton Review ranking as this year’s best party school, few in this classic college town find it outlandish that the Gators have placed in the top 20 four years running. To walk the campus and environs on a football weekend is to navigate an endless river of alcohol, from the flowing taps of the Swamp Restaurant, a popular hangout near the stadium, to the off-campus bungalow on Northwest Second Avenue that houses one of the world’s larger beer bongs.
