Straying from the Limelight: The Release of College Partying

For my research essay, I plan to explore how the partying culture of college operates as a form of release from societal pressures to succeed. Partying – being generally defined as sex, drugs and alcohol – allows one to enter into an alternate form of reality, essentially an escape from the intense pressure to be accepted into a good school, the pressure to get outstanding grades and an outstanding job. American society sets these intense pressures to succeed while simultaneously encouraging partying as an outlet. This outlet – this release – allows one to return to the vigorous, fast paced and burdening roles one is forced to carry due to societal pressures. I will specifically show how the April 26 2007 car accident of two high school seniors in Bellmore, New York demonstrates that persons extremely involved with societal pressures to succeed need a form of release. Two 17 year old seniors, intoxicated and reaching speeds up to 98 mph on the freeway, crashed and were ejected from their car on Long Island in April 2007. These teens were otherwise ‘perfect kids’: excellent grades, good reputations, volunteers, and were accepted to prestigious universities. This pressure to succeed forces young people – from middle schoolers to college students – to search for a way in to escape from this pressure. Historian John F. Kassoon makes a similar argument about amusement parks in his book Amusing the Million. Kasson says, “Coney Island acted as a safety valve, a mechanism of social release and control that ultimately protected existing society…In an age of mass culture, amusement emerged as the new opiate of the people” (109). In short, Kasson argues that Coney Island – and amusement parks in general – allowed a physical and psychological release from the new industrial pressures of society. I am building on Kasson’s message by arguing that partying in college offers the same form of release that amusement parks offered in a newly industrial society. It allows one to escape from the everyday pressures – and, through this escape, reaffirms these pressures. I will also build on Asher Roth’s latest song “I Love College”. This song’s chorus: “That party last night was awfully crazy I wish we taped it/ I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked/ Drink my beer and smoke my weed but my good friends is all I need/Pass out at 3, wake up at 10, go out to eat then do it again” illustrates that society actively encourages students to use this as a release. I will thus argue that just as industrial society of the early 1900s set Americans up in search of a release, societal pressures to succeed placed search of a release – to college students, what becomes known as partying.