Animal House may have premiered in 1978, but college students have been fat, drunk, and stupid for ages. Even Harvard is not immune to the American tradition of collegiate binge drinking.
Henry Wechsler, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), claims that binge drinking at universities is as old as the Louisiana Purchase. “Thomas Jefferson complained about it when he was president of the University of Virginia,” Wechsler says. At Harvard, the alcoholic ethos is equally ancient. In the nineteenth century, commencement ceremonies were presided over by a sheriff, several police officers, and two judges in order to control the students’ raucous “gambling, drinking, swearing, and fighting,” Wechsler writes in his book Dying To Drink.
The old habits haven’t died. The alcohol-related festivities of Harvard-Yale follow in the same spirit as Cornell’s Slope Day or Princeton’s Nude Olympics, and final clubs also help keep ancient traditions alive, he says.
But academics are divided as to whether Animal House-style antics have meant a rise in binge drinking in the last 20 years.
BEER GOGGLES?
H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, argues that excessive drinking is considered a long-standing cultural tradition with no real reason. “On any night in any campus the majority of people are sober,” he says. “Intoxicated behavior is very vivid. Everyone remembers and talks about it the next day.
“Think about it this way,” Perkins says. “How often do you hear someone get up the day after a party and say, ‘Wow, did you see how many people were sober last night?’”
Just chatting about kegstands might give the impression that binge drinking is the status quo.
Da Chang ’06, consul of Sigma Chi, agrees. He says movies like Animal House misrepresent Greek life, giving fraternities an unwarranted reputation. “You hear stories,” he says, “so people blow them out of proportion.”
But Chang is emphatic about dispelling the rumors. “We do not condone binge drinking,” he says. “We enforce this [policy] and take action when needed.”
Indeed, most studies indicate college binge drinking has not increased since the legal drinking age rose to 21 in 1984 and Animal House was released in 1978.
AND THEN CAME BELUSHI
If the amount of drinking hasn’t increased, some say the kind of drinking has.
“Common opinion says that [the frequency of] drinking games has increased significantly,” says Paul J. Barreira, a psychiatry professor and director of Harvard University Health Services’ Department of Behavioral Health and Academic Counseling, who added there is no data to support that notion.
Though he too suspects an increase in drinking, Co-Master of Currier House Joseph L. Badaracco recalls quite a bit of student binge drinking in his college days, but he says he’s seen evidence that even more happens today. “I think it’s been part of the college scene for a long time,” he says. “Has it become even heavier and more prevalent in the last 20 years? There’s some evidence that says that’s the case.”
Indeed, some older Harvardians, such as Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, have noticed more heavy drinkers on campus today. “Binge drinking was not as common when I was a student,” he says. “On the other hand, there was more use of drugs like mescaline and LSD. And more students smoked cigarettes.”
The 1978 release of Animal House may have been to blame for the change in drinking culture since Gross’ day. In September of that year, The Washington Post reported that the toga party, “this semester’s ritual of college exhibitionism,” was “popping up” everywhere from private schools like Georgetown to frat-heavy state schools like the University of Maryland.
Meanwhile, a group of students at the University of Wisconsin tried to woo a crowd of 10,000 to a party. The group hoped to set a record for mixing a drink of each partygoer’s contribution of choice.
In Gross’ eyes, the post-1978 fad has lasted too long. “I look forward to the day when students view binge drinking the way they view cigarette smoking today, as a dangerous habit,” he says.
Even if we can’t trace precisely when shades of the Animal House ethos emerged at Harvard, we can assume it existed early enough to inspire parts of the film. Co-writer Doug Kenny ’69 is a Harvard alumnus, and if his Spee Club presidency doesn’t scream raucous, perhaps his trademark goof does: legend has it he could put his entire fist in his mouth. Some say that Delta Tau Chi of Animal House is based on a fraternity at Dartmouth, but maybe it’s time to reconsider.
