College students consume more
than 4 billion cans of beer a year.

That’s a startling statistic.

Fortunately, none of those cans are
mine.

I don’t drink. Maybe it’s the
taste of beer that turns me off.

Maybe it’s how stupid you act when
you’re drunk.

While you’re drunk you can fly,
sing, dance, kill or even rape, and
afterwards you won’t remember a
single moment.

The hangover makes you feel
SO BAD, but you want to drink all
over again the next night.

While some people drink
because they actually enjoy it, oth-
ers get slammed because they feel
that it’s socially acceptable to
endure the awful taste.

In addition, the smell spreads
itself into your clothes, car, and
especially your breath.

It’s fun to sit outside Creswell
Hall at 2:30 a.m. on Friday and
watch the drunk students return to
the dorm.

It’s hilarious to watch the
females throw themselves at guys
that they don’t even know. And it’s
a blast to watch a group of drunk-
ies laugh and tell jokes, not know-
ing that they are the joke.

On football game days, I love to
scope out the beer “Flea Market” in
Lipscomb Hall’s parking lot. It’s
amazing how people will travel
more than 200 miles to get wasted
on our campus.

Then, after fans and alumni jam
the streets of Athens, our historic
campus is left decorated with a
variety of beer bottles. Our parking
lots are covered with broken glass.

Our student center smells like
liquor on a Sunday morning’s mist.

Look on the bright side. There
are about 6,000 students at the
University who choose not to drink.

That is not a large number consid-
ering that there are about 30,000
students here.

A ridiculous number of students
who drink are underage. Many
bars, clubs and parties provide
alcohol to underage drinkers with-
out thoroughly checking the birth-
dates on their driver’s licenses.

Unfortunately, some students
who are members of fraternities,
sororities, or attend lots of parties,
feel that it is lame to not drink or
that people may not like them for
refraining from alcohol.

It’s amazing how some students
will push decades of training and
teaching from their home, church,
and community to the side and give
in to temptation.

– Mark Anthony Thomas is a contributing writer for The Red and Black.