Back in December, students here at Kalamazoo College participated in the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey in an attempt to diagnose the alcohol, drugs, and sex students here participate in.  Since there is no indication that anything has changed between then and now, an evaluation of the data allows a relevant diagnosis of the more  nefarious aspects of K social culture and what this says about us as students.

Alcohol and drug consumption within a college demographic is essentially a litmus test for a healthy college community. By getting an advanced education, people in college–while extremely fortunate–are doing an unbelievable amount of good for not just themselves, but their community and the world as a whole.  Principles appreciated in the college academic setting follow graduates throughout their lives, dictating motives of social responsibility and societal contribution.  But, as my father says, “Work hard, play hard,” which, the more I think about it, is sadistically a uniquely American school of thought.  As we progress through college, we (hopefully) learn the wisdoms of how to handle the pressures of academic life.  When encountering adversity, the malleable college student transitions from phases of “freaking out” in their underclassman years to fazes of “there’s some s**t I gotta git done” as they come closer to graduation.  We need to relax.  When we respect our educations, we are able to understand that things are going to be OK.  As a sailor once suggested, “Everything in moderation.” Or, some things in moderation.

For the survey to put the binge drinking quota at five drinks seems a little low, with 48% of students claiming to have “binged” in the previous two weeks.  A 750 ml bottle of wine contains about five five-ounce servings, and a bottle of red hardly seems like reproachable opulence, considering the 55% of respondents reporting that friends would “disapprove” of an incident of bingeing. The most common reasons K students drink are to “break the ice” (81%), to “enhance social activity” (76.2%), to “give people something to talk about” (76.1%), and “to give people something to do” (76.9%).  All this is quite ironic when considering that only 55.9% of respondents claim to have “engaged in sexual intercourse within the past year.” Of course the real number is much lower, probably around 37% or less, according to an informal and unauthorized social survey conducted by Kosmo staff since the release of the Core Survey.  For the apparent lack of “things to do” and the apparent success rate of “ice breakers,” one wonders where all that social energy is channeled.  Indeed, 19.4% of the polled had used alcohol the last time they had sex, an almost identical figure to the 18.3% of respondents who consider alcohol to “make men sexier.”

The largest disparity between K students and our national counterparts came in the categories of academic persistence.  While 22% of a  reference group  of 71,189 students from 148 institutions reported having “performed poorly on a test or important project” due to their alcohol or drug use, only 11% of K students admitted a similar fate.  Furthermore, 30.1% of the aggregated poll “missed a class” due to substance use, more than double the rate of 14.6% found here at K.  Yet the hangover rate at K was higher than the national average–65.2% versus 62.5%–indicating more academic fortitude in the face of typical college party culture.

K also digressed from the national average in our consumption of illicit drugs and marijuana.  When considering “Lifetime Prevalence,” K students consume cocaine (3.8%), sedatives (3.8%), and opiates (1.3%) at less than half the rate of the national average, while matching our fellow Americans in hallucinogens (8.3%), and beating them out in marijuana (52.2% at K versus 45.3% nationally).   No K respondents predicted steroids to have “lifetime prevalence.”

With 74% of underaged K students claiming to have consumed alcohol while at college, the Core Survey brings into question the pragmatism of an “abstinence” oriented campus alcohol policy.  While the school is legally obligated to a “21 means 21″ stance on alcohol consumption, everyone knows this is like a squirrel asking a semi truck to “please desist” before being run over,  as effective as posting a “1 m.p.h.” speed limit sign on I-94 W, and as futile as requesting a hold on further tuition hikes while inflation plays catch-up.  It is silly that the drinking age in the United States is 21 years of age.  While 18 is too european, 19 years would theoretically keep alcohol buyers out of high schools, while in effect allowing students to moderate their own consumption while at college.  Consuming large amounts of alcohol is often a social construction.  Indeed, 67.7% of K respondents “believe the social atmosphere on campus promotes alcohol use,” while 83.2% of students consider “drinking… central in the social [lives] of male students.”  Correspondingly, 49% of K students have “felt pressure to drink or use drugs.”

A drinking age of 21 makes alcohol consumption “something to be desired” for many undergrads, increasing its appeal as a “forbidden fruit.”  Similar to “Alter Boy Syndrome,” where it is the very sheltering of a youth that makes an exploration into the Dionysian so enticing, it is obvious that the very existence of the law is all the encouragement we students need to break it.  Everything about college is a heightened experience intended to mimic the lives and careers it theoretically prepares us to have.  We work hard, worry hard, dream hard, love hard, drink hard, play hard, cry hard, and laugh hard.  For many of us, college really is the first opportunity to live a life that does not involve being home at 7:30 for mommy’s dinner.  It is human nature to take exploration to the extreme, and extreme is the nature of exploration itself.  I see people fall-down drunk at Saturday night parties, covered in their own spittle and viscera who, five or ten years from now are going to be family men and women with respectable jobs contributing to the livelihoods of their fellow man.  Sunday morning, they will pull themselves out of a bed, scrub the slovenly grime off their wretched bodies, drink plenty of water, and prepare for Monday’s class.

It is important to acknowledge that alcohol and drug use is not without its risks.  Alcohol was present in  83% of reported “physical violence,” 100% of “theft involving force or threat of force,” and 50% of “forced sexual touching or unwanted sexual intercourse.”  We’ve all seen someone too drunk, and can name people who’s behavior we feel has changed due to drug use, evident in the  12.9% of K respondents who think they “might have a drinking or other drug problem,” a figure higher than the 10.8% from the national sample.

Like all sins, however, drinking and drug use has its time and place.  Jack Kerouac lived by the mantra of “try never get drunk outside your own house,” or someone else’s house, or a bar… Obviously to live life like a writer who died of a combination of depression and kidney failure would be both unwise and extremely cliché, but Kerouac had a point. When it comes to substance use, don’t allow one part of your life to interfere with another, and when I look around, I think we here at Kalamazoo College are doing just fine.  While any community has its exceptions, by and large, alcohol and drugs seem to provide a seasoning that compliments the already tantalizing academic and social entrée served up here at Kalamazoo.

I’m looking at an America that’s confused.  We’ve got two wars, and somehow people care about an unemployed ex-governor who stepped down citing “The rugged rugged hardy people that live up here and some of the most patriotic people whom you will ever know live here, and one thing that you are known for is your steadfast support of our military community up here and I thank you for that and thank you United States military for protecting the greatest nation on Earth. Together we stand.”

I suppose her official title now would be “author.” Egads.

I think people question the President because he’s the president–this is necessary when done with intelligence, and politics when done without.  Our economy is not humming along like we expect it to, and of course people want healthcare and of course nobody wants to pay for it and of course we don’t necessarily want massive medical corporations to essentially control our health, but at least its better than nationalizing the entire industry because we’re Americans damnit, there’s such a thing as manners.

In his 1931 book Epic of America, James Truslow Adams writes of the American Dream:

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Essentially it’s the idea that America provides the gridiron on which personal liberty can score a touchdown.

With a Michigan unemployment rate at 14.8% as of September (up from 6.8% in April 2008 just prior to the crash), the present vitality of the Dream has been called into question:  how am I supposed to have a satisfying livelihood if I can’t get a job?  The Russians are breathing down our necks, and of course the socialists are having a field day.  I even met a Communist over the weekend.  A Communist!

America’s economic system is free market capitalism because free market capitalism is the closest economic manifestation of the rugged individualism that has allowed America to, well, exist.  America is an experiment in that we as citizens have essentially played out a three hundred thirty three year lab test to answer one simple question:  What happens when you let nature take over, the only check on which is the very people whom nature governs?

Our representative democracy, social principles, economic system and defining documents are all intended to simulate an animal existence in a natural world.  Though it certainly is not without its faults–the Electoral College, for example, probably should have been dismantled by now–it allows the best educated, keenest, and most voracious animals to win, hold jobs with large paychecks, and to be in positions of power where decisions for others are made.  Like a pack of wolves tearing apart a moose in the December woods, those who are able to obtain their fill will survive the winter, and the weak shall starve.

Sports are an even more interesting human experiment in that as opposed to human traits such as immense intelligence and wit determine the victor, it is the person who able to act the most animalistic who wins.  And what do they win?  And where does that money go?  YES!

Image that of flickr.com user mush2274

The idea here is the system of incentives that says positive actions will be rewarded with positive results, and stupid actions, like being weak, will result in death.  Wolf gets moose, we get money, and thus the financial opportunity for a healthy lifestyle and the ability to participate in varying levels of culture.  A neurosurgeon, for example, could theoretically attend both an Opera at the Fox Theater and a free jam poetry session at a Starbucks, whereas a homeless man could only attend the jam poetry session, but only if he had enough change for a hot chocolate, in which case there becomes a stratification for even the least expensive outlets of culture outside of public programs supported by the community.  We’re all playing Super Mario, and, to get to the next level, a player must get enough gold coins without dying.

The government does a pretty good job allow all strata of society complete access to culture–through public libraries–but then again, unless one is an accomplished autodidact, one may not be able to understand nor fully appreciate the content or context of what one is reading or to what one is listening.  So we have literacy programs, funded by both taxes and caring individuals and…

The wolves begin to pass meat down the food chain, blood dripping from their mouths.

Americans generally want the government to leave them alone unless they want something  from the government.  This allows the experiment to continue to run without any unnecessary variables, and Americans pride themselves in being thorough.  There is no government in nature outside of the dear Mother herself.

———–

Of course humans are not wolves, we just act like them.  We’re willing to make concessions from time to time, to pass meat down the line.  In fact, most of the developing world fails to appreciate just how nice we are to each other.  In my travels hither and thar, I was surprised just how convinced most foreigners were that we ate our young so as for mothers to avert future workforce competition, especially when considering the present state of unemployment.  We’re wolves, not sharks.  We are taught how to hunt, a natural instinct amongst carnivores one must carefully cultivate using the proper resources at hand.

Enter the guilds at Kalamzoo College.

Formed January 12, 2008, the guilds seek to “bring together alumni and current students, faculty and staff around interdisciplinary issues that affect today’s world.”  Made possible with a three-year/$249,500 grant from Detroit-based McGregor Fund, the guilds merged in February with the Center for Career and Professional Development so as to become institutionally funded by the time the grant runs dry mid-2010.

Initially, says Joan Hawxhurst, Director of the CCPD and The Guilds at Kalamazoo College, the guilds were going to focus their energy on event planning and presentation, but migrated more to an “apprentice-master” model that sought to pair students with professionals in their field of interest. “It adds an extra layer to the CCPD,” she said.  Anyone can join at the click of a button, and there are no associated fees.

Currently four guilds–Business, Sustainability, Justice and Peace, and Health–act as a two-way real life LinkedIn for alumni, students, organizations, and other professionals.  The guilds also seek to “march in step with the curriculum,” in order to “supplement department events,” Hawxhurst said.  Faculty are thus able to adapt guild activities to their courses, and the guilds, in turn, are able to bring guest speakers and other such “supplements” into the classroom.

“There is a deep, deep institutional commitment to the guilds,” she said.  “If you hear the President talk, I think she says the word ‘guild’ as much as anything else she talks about these days.”

In the next two to four years, the College could see the creation of two to four more guilds drawn from the many proposed “target ideas,” including Education, the Arts, Media and Technology, Public Service, and Language, Hawxhurst said.  Furthermore, the emphasis on “face-to-face” connecting in this business of “linkages and pipelines” has resulted in strengthened relationships between the College and the greater Kalamazoo area, primarily through local alumni.

For now, however, Hawxhurst wants to “get it done well before moving on to the next thing.”

The wolf turns to the weak, bloodied beta, grins a toothy smile, and pushes raw flesh across the snow with his nose.

After all, it’s almost Thanksgiving!

Thomas Gilchrist contributed reporting on this article, including the interview with Director Hawxhurst

Editor’s Note: a correction was made in quotation from “If you hear President Wilson-Oyelaran speak, practically every other word is ‘guilds,’ ” to the correct “If you hear the President talk, I think she says the word ‘guild’ as much as anything else she talks about these days.”

An unidentified police cruiser was discovered in the yard of 200 Stuart Ave., across from Kalamazoo College Friday afternoon, stuck in the mud with the rear wheels positioned on top of several decorative rocks outlining the garden.  The cruiser appeared to have left the road heading Southeast on West Main Street, leapt the curb on the Stuart side of the property, and went galavanting into the yard, where the car became immobile.  During the incident, the vehicle struck three campaign signs for the upcoming November 3 city-wide elections, including a “Vote Yes for Fairness and Equality” sign in support of Ordinance 1856.  No one appeared hurt in the incident, the police cruiser did not seem damaged, and no other vehicles seemed to be involved.  Two other patrol vehicles and a flat-bed tow truck were called in to assist with the situation.

Leaving school for the day, a college student, Keith Jarrens, stumbled upon the malay soon after its occurrence.  Camera in hand, Mr. Jarrens began photographing the display from the opposite side of West Main.  The two assisting patrol cars fled the scene at the sign of his presence.  In crossing the street to get a better shot of just how close this cop car came to the house–where children are known to have played in the yard–a remaining officer approached Mr. Jarrens.

Though reports are hazy, this officer, who appeared middle aged, and of middle rank, is thought to have been the driver of the vehicle, as he was the only policeperson who remained at the scene with the car.

There was no police line, and no further security forces to secure the premises were present. The exchange between the officer and Mr. Jarrens as transcribed below took place with Mr. Jarrens standing on the sidewalk, and the unidentified officer standing in the garden of the owners of 200 Stuart Ave.

OFFICER: Stop!  I will arrest you.

JARRENS: On what charge?

OFFICER: Obstruction and Interference with Police Matters.

JARRENS: Interfering with what?  The tow truck?  Besides, this sidewalk is public property.

OFFICER: Get out of here.

JARRENS:  Between the two of us, you are the only one who is trespassing on private property.

OFFICER: I said get out of here.  I will arrest you.

JARRENS: Alright, alright, I’m going.

OFFICER: Faster.

JARRENS: I’M GOING

OFFICER: I SAID FASTER

JARRENS: I’M GOING!!!!!!

Upon leaving the scene, none of the campaign signs were restored to their prior, upright position.  The sign stating “Vote Yes for Fairness and Equality” was left face-down in the mud, torn and shredded.  According to a source who did not want to be identified due to their proximity to the incident, two college students returned later that night, around 11:36, and righted the signs as best as they could.