Party in the U.S.A

Sep 06 2011, Written by Jack Wagner in Backpages, 4 Comments

Back home in Hong Kong, everyone warned me of the culture shock I was going to experience upon arrival at Duke. I didn’t know exactly what they meant at the time.

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Of course Dukies would be slightly different than me, given that I had spent the last sixteen years of my life in Asia. But would it be the conservative political views of the South that would shock me? Maybe the way they eat? Cutting back on dimsum and replacing that component of my diet with burgers couldn’t be that drastic! But the first night of O-week I understood. Compared to Asian or European youth, many Dukies have a very different sense of what it means to have fun—what it means to party.

Granted, back in Hong Kong, I could go into a club and buy a drink when I was 16. With the stricter drinking age regulations in the United States, it is inevitable that the philosophy of drinking would be affected. “Pre-gaming” was a term I had never heard before, and what I learned is that the point of partying for many is to get as drunk as possible early in the night so that the rest of the night is more fun. Not only is this a more dangerous way of getting drunk, but it also suggests that heavy intoxication is a requirement for a good night of partying. Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that being drunk can be a lot of fun. It worries me, however, that many people I meet here have forgotten how to have fun without being near-blackout drunk.

The atmosphere at the club was also a total shock to me. The first night of O-week, when a big group of my friends arrived at Shooters, the girls and the guys started pairing up and grinding. Although it is an accepted social norm to do that here, I couldn’t believe it at first. If I tried to grind with a girl at a club in Hong Kong, she would call the cops and try me in court for molestation. And given that dry-humping is the primary mode of interaction at clubs here, it is no surprise that half of the pairs of “dancers” end up making out after the second song. At the end of that first night, one of the girls in my group told me that the guy she grinded with was “a really good dancer.” I told her to go watch some Jabbawockeez videos.

The crux of the issue is the abnormally high drinking age in the U.S. If everyone who partied at Duke was of legal drinking age, pre-gaming would no longer be necessary. This means that in general, people would probably get less drunk because they would be drinking over a longer period of time.

However, I am not convinced that lowering the drinking age would affect the grinding phenomenon. It seems to be an accepted facet of party life here that people enjoy. But what is it about American (or Duke) culture that makes grinding acceptable? And why is the attitude so different in Asia or in Europe?

It might take me my whole Duke career to answer that question.