The War on Fun: Which Ivy Parties Hardest? And Which Ivy Gets Caught Partying Hardest?
Joe's Dartblog has some very interesting statistics posted about alcohol and drug infractions across the Ivy League. We don't know where on Earth these stats came from, but we're going to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. And so we can finally answer the perennial question: do Dartmouth students really party harder? Or is the Dartmouth administration just better at prosecuting their draconian and never-ending War on Fun?
Between 2004 and 2006, Dartmouth students were about fifteen times more likely to get caught with alcohol than their peers at Penn. With an average of 52 infractions per thousand students, the average Dartmouth beer-guzzler has an over 5% chance of getting written up in a given year. Dartmouth students were also two and a half times more likely to get an alcohol infraction than those who attended the school with the second highest infraction rate - Cornell.
Brown students were cited at a rate of 14.7 per 1,000, Harvard at 12.3, Yale at 8.8, Princeton at 4.4, and Columbia at 3.7.
Joe astutely recognizes two possible scenarios that might explain the numbers:
1. Dartmouth students drink radically more than the Ivy League average; or,
2. The Dartmouth administration is at war with its students and enforces the alcohol laws with incomparable harshness."
After the jump: drug infractions by school.
When we look at the number of drug-related citations, though, conventional wisdom goes out the window. Dartmouth - not exactly the Ivy epicenter of shroomers and potheads (we're looking at you, Brown) - also has the highest number of drug infractions, 6.0 per thousand students. Princeton and Cornell - not exactly drug havens - have the second and third highest number of drug infractions per thousand students, 3.4 and 3.2 respectively. Brown's rate is just 2.2. The only explanation is that these numbers don't match up with alcohol and drug use - instead, they correlate with alcohol and drug enforcement.
It looks like both Fun and the War on Fun began at Dartmouth. And watch out, Ivies: the War on Fun is spreading. So here's a plea: why can't we rail some lines, smoke some bowls, trip some shrooms, and guzzle our beer in peace?
You can download Dartblog's excellent Excel file (look at that alliteration!) with the full stats here.
54 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: Dartmouth, war on fun
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
February 19th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
cornell and dartmouth are probably equivalently hard partiers (although my guess would be per capita dartmouth drinks more), with penn coming in second (this is having hung out extensively at most of the ivies that would be considered contenders for this/having good friends at these schools).
that said, the other thing is that s&s (dartmouth’s security force) are pretty heavyhanded, but nobody really complains about it because s&s is still pretty lax compared to most other colleges…it’s just that the ivy league happens to be a paragon of permissiveness when in comes to illegal substances.
finally, as far as drugs go, s&s (depending on the officer) usually turns a blind eye towards weed, unless they catch you with a stash or dealing rather than just smoking. blow on the other hand is a whole other story: i’ve know of people whose rooms were surreptitiously searched while they were on break simply based on the rumor that they had/did coke. shrooms and other hallucinogens also have a minor presence on the scene, but because only people who know what they’re doing have them its rare to see them come up in the police blotter.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
re: the end of my last sentence
no pun intended. har har har
February 19th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
You should also note that Dartmouth students are more likely to drink on campus due to their location, as would Cornell students, where as Columbia students would be the least likely.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
does this necessarily mean that Dartmouth kids party harder? The statistics are equally liable to the conclusion that they’re bigger retards and can’t manage to drink without getting caught.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Yale shows up somewhere on the low side of the plot, but substantially higher than brown, princeton, and Penn. That’s surprising… in 4 years, I can’t think of many (any?) people who were cited for alchohol. I guess the occasional frat party is broken up, but I always thought that the administration (and police!) were _very_ relaxed about things. Who’s getting arrested at yale?!
February 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
the police have better things to worry about in west philly than underage drinking.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
If Dartmouth students were “bigger retards,” they would be at your shitty school.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
the police have better things to worry about in west philly than underage drinking.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
“We don’t know where on Earth these stats came from”
Look at the source on the graph! “Source: U.S. Government Clery Report”
Why can’t Joe center his blog so I’m not reading everything crammed on the left?! You too, IvyGate.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
as a prior resident advisor at cornell, i can honestly say that the RAs fell into 2 groups – the ones who were ridiculously zealous in their newly founded powers, and the ones who didn’t give a shit as long as the partying wasn’t going to get them in trouble.
i was the RA who wrote up 2 people in one academic year just so i wouldn’t look like i didn’t care.
the infractions per 1000 data is definitely more indicative of enforcement.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
You guys are pretty late on this. The Dartmouth Review reported this in October.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Agree with bigred06: a higher number of alcohol infractions doesn’t necessarily reflect more drinking – just a stricter enforcement of drinking laws.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Actually, Joe wrote about this in The Dartmouth in February last year:
http://thedartmouth.com/2007/02/16/opinion/thirsty/
February 19th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
The schools with the 2 highest averages are also the 2 schools in the middle of nowhere– with nothing better to do than sit on campus, get drunk, and get caught. No surprise there.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
when is drinking alcohol a crime?
February 19th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Dartmouth UGAs (somewhat equivalent to RAs) are not seen as under any pressure to bust anyone. The only time I can think of a UGA reporting a student is when they genuinely feared for the safety of the student or when there was property damage that would have otherwise been split among the whole hall. UGAs are not doing the enforcement here.
What is to blame, I feel, is the size of Dartmouth’s campus. Fact of the matter is an S and S officer can walk down one of two streets any mon, wed, fri, or saturday night and catch an intoxicated student if they want to. One bad slip on the ice at the wrong time, and you’ll get picked up.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Ahem, lets get to the real issue here. This “Joe” character has seriously got to improve his formatting skills if he’s going to get decent job after school. That graph looks like complete shit. Where do they teach kids to make shit like that? Disaster.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Yale is only as low as reported because of what were, until this fall, extremely lax drinking laws. If a Yalie is blackout drunk, their friends can simply drop them off at DUH until morning, at which point they’re discharged no questions asked. I don’t think Yale cops have disciplinary authority, and the NHPD couldn’t even touch campus parties. All that has changed, though- Expect the numbers to skyrocket now that the War on Fun has reached the fair shores of New Haven.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
haha sucks for you smug Yalies!
February 19th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, a sat this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five- and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to comedown and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses old some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, be spattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, for as much as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of `the Captain, ‘ gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, `in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:’ after which the mail was robbed in Peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature insight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a house-breaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster.
Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair laces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures–the creatures of this chronicle among the rest–along the roads that lay before them.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
How the hell does alcohol abuse mean that people are partying more. Is this really the best standard you guys come up with to judge this?
February 19th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
yeah, really – since when does highest number of citations = who parties hardest? to give you an idea of yale PD- one officer gave a bunch of official “Yale Police” patches to a group of high school kids on yale campus for the summer. also the Yale PD bought a segway. these are signs they aren’t too good at their jobs, and that they aren’t very likely to give out citations….
February 19th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Methodology flawed. Next question.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Look, Yale is great. Its better than Dartmouth, Princeton, Penn and the rest in many areas. Just not at partying. Fine. I’ll take that.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I don’t know if Dartmouth parties the hardest, but from what I’ve seen at other schools, it sure seems like it. I don’t really have any proof other than a list of things that are socially acceptable at Dartmouth that just aren’t elsewhere: booting all over yourself, pulling a friend’s trigger, hosing yourself in your sleep, etc.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
don’t really care who parties hardest, but half of cornell students live off campus which makes quaker girls point sort of moot. I mean don’t kids at Harvard and Princeton tend to stay on campus for most if not all of their four years. I rarely partied on campus once I moved off.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I love how people are getting defensive about this.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
One thing is certain: Joe Malchow is neither partying nor having fun.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Penn is still the undisputed crime king. Bow down to us, lest you get your ear slashed off with a broken beer bottle (true story)
February 20th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Princeton kids just don’t get caught as often.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Actually, it’s because it’s really hard to black out on Disaronno and Diet Coke
February 20th, 2008 at 12:25 am
honestly, guys, why are you trying to fight it. we have the reputation, we have the statistics, we have the game (pong). its a tough thing to quantify but I think theres a preponderance of evidence in our favor. get over it, you didnt choose whatever school you’re at because it partied hard.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Is it possible that maybe the penalties for infractions at Dartmouth are much lighter than at other Ivies? So then, the cost of getting written up is small, so students don’t avoid it like they do at other schools. Just a thought.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:32 am
@ cornell ‘06: getting picked up at dartmouth is a pain in the ass, but the first or second time doesn’t go on your record. people don’t really treat it like a big deal. also, we have a good sam policy regarding alcohol. i don’t know how this compares to other schools.
@dartmouther: good call.
dartmouth, i think, does party a bit more than the average ivy league school, especially on campus… but probably not 4x harder.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:51 am
penn cops don’t care; that’s why penn doesn’t have arrests for drug or alcohol abuse. i’ve smoked joints in front of penn cops who asked me how it was. i’ve drank in front of penn cops and offered them drinks. i’ve smoked joints WITH penn cops. this girl i know used to buy weed from a penn cop.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:25 am
“sb” hit the nail on the head. Dartmouth’s elevated level of infractions just means that Dartmouth students are too dumb to figure out how not to get caught, that Yale/Penn don’t really feel the need to be paternalistic, or some combination thereof. A more accurate study might look at, oh, I dunno, per capita alcohol consumption. Or maybe just the aggregate sales volumes of liquor stores and bars surrounding campus. Such a study would have reporting problems and distortions from the surrounding community, but it wouldn’t be retarded, and that’s more than I can say for this one.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:52 am
@Y’10: You’re a moron. Hanover is a very small town with a disproportionately large police force. Dartmouth has a large, open, rural campus that functions much like a panopticon; if you’re walking from A to B, the likelihood is that you’ll fall under the watchful eye of the security apparatus. Yale and New Haven police have to worry about muggings, assaults, rapes, and murders; if they were spending all of their time enforcing alcohol violations, then they wouldn’t be doing their jobs. Obviously Yale students wouldn’t be caught or charged as much. Lastly, I always thought that it was a known fact that Dartmouth is much more generous about reporting these kinds of statistics than other schools.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Penn has the least infractions because West Philly is a playground for college kids. You can walk around the streets with a bong and a keg strapped to your back, and cops will just protect you from the locals. . .
February 20th, 2008 at 10:52 am
The fact of the matter is: you have a 1 in 20 chance of being “picked up” at Dartmouth in any given year. I don’t care how hard we claim to party, that’s just excessive.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
http://sosarahsays.blogspot.com/2007/11/alcohol-consumption-per-capita.html
NH is 2nd behind Luxembourg.
she got the stats from http://www.unusualmaps.com/Consumption.html.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I can’t wait for someone to die of alcohol poisoning on one of the eight campuses – and then hear all the whining about “why didn’t the administration do anything???” waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
February 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
this is definately flawed…
ive been to so many parties and bars
the thing about penn and philly is that the cops don’t bust our parties let alone if they do they don’t write tickets…
and if we aren’t doing house parties, we are using photoshopped copies of passports to get slammed at bars…
February 21st, 2008 at 11:47 pm
What constitutes an alcohol infraction??
February 24th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
i’m going to guess it means actually getting caught intoxicated or with alcohol by either the campus security or the police. i can honestly say i believe dartmouth has the most because we drink a lot more than most other schools do. i’m only a freshman and i have 2 infractions already, my roommate has 1, and those other guy on my floor has at least 7…
February 27th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
In actuality, Penn’s statistics are a result of the medical amnesty policy the university holds: if you are caught drinking, only one person needs to claim alcohol poisoning and no one – not friends, boyfriends, sketchy frat brothers – can be prosecuted by the Office of Student Conduct. Of course, this means that one person’s parents end up footing the $800 bill for an ambulance ride two blocks to HUP, but hey, they go to Penn! What is eight hundred bucks when you’ve got a trust fund of $800,000?
February 29th, 2008 at 1:26 am
If I partied less, I may be a neurosurgeon today. Although medicine makes me sick. Maybe I partied to be good at school?? But Ivies shouldn’t suggest to state schools that even the yuppies and nerds are taking drugs. Something about George W. Bush doesn’t translate well to college students. Very interesting study. If the data is accurate, Dartmouth needs more attendance at football games (you know, get out of bed and make it to the game).
February 29th, 2008 at 1:30 am
If I partied less, I may be a neurosurgeon today. Although medicine makes me sick. Maybe I partied to be good at school?? But Ivies shouldn’t suggest to state schools that even the yuppies and nerds are taking drugs. Something about George W. Bush doesn’t translate well to college students. Very interesting study. If the data is accurate, Dartmouth needs more attendance at football games (you know, get out of bed and make it to the game).
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
If my dick was longer, I might be black today.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Lehigh drinks more in one night than the entire Ivy League does in a year….
June 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I went to Dartmouth in the 90’s having been to college in Scotland. D had lots of talk about drinking, lots of drinking games, and lots of weak beer but there was little serious drinking. I have to say that it was a welcome break from getting bevvied in Edinburgh but it wasn’t even close to as “play hard” as it believed.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Yeah, Dartmouth is basically a lot of Keystone Light (the larget distributor of Keystone Light in the nation is Jack Stinson in Hanover), but still in large quantities because of all the pong. The drinking culture really makes much more sense if you’ve been to Hanover, since then you know that there is NOTHING to do once you leave campus.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 am
@hmmph: Don’t kid yourself, Penn kids don’t have trust funds. That’s why you’re at Penn.
— two years late
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
makes a lot of sense elise seeing as how penn is the school thats produced the 3rd most billionaires behind harvard and stanford.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
This is like debating on who is the smartest kid on the short bus.