Over the next year, we will embarrass our parents. Some of us might even be expelled.
However, we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing that we're in any way original. We're just the newest addition to a centuries-old parade of scoundrels and miscreants who, in their spare time, also called themselves students.
In his history of Western civilization, "From Dawn to Decadence," Jacques Barzun writes that medieval undergraduates were "practitioners of anarchy" for whom "townsmen were fair game for mugging and murder with impunity." More recently, students who had engaged in drunken rioting at the University of Virginia almost brought that university's 82-year-old founder -- Thomas Jefferson -- to tears during their trial by the university's Board of Visitors.
The students of our own University haven't let themselves be outdone by their rivals in Charlottesville. Phillips Russell asserts that the first students at Chapel Hill "owned more pistols than books." William Snider writes that by the 1830s two competing social clubs -- the Ugly Club and the Boring Club -- dominated campus life. Their mission? To make their members familiar "with all the paths of vice in the college for fun and frolic."
Without forgetting or neglecting this distinguished heritage, it's still necessary for us, as students, to realize how unique our place in society is. Despite our nation's obsession with work and productivity, we still manage to carve out four years of introspection and self-improvement for our most promising young adults. What an incredible gift! While many of us are working our way through college, many of us are also on the dole -- receiving free tuition, room and board and alcohol from our parents. Not only are we scoundrels, we're mooching scoundrels.
Not everyone is so lucky. President Bush has recently threatened to veto a bill that would allow welfare recipients to attend community college while receiving government aid. Without support from the government to pay their family's bills while they attend classes, education is an impossible dream for single mothers who missed their first chance at post-secondary training. Bush's attack hardly seems fair, especially considering he spent his college years boozing it up while mooching off of his parents. While it's fine for the rich to depend on their parents during their college years, it's apparently unacceptable for the poor to depend on the federal government during theirs.
There's nothing wrong with following in the footsteps of our forebears -- and George W. Bush -- by having fun during our college years. If not now, when? I guarantee you binge drinking isn't as cool at 45. But at the same time, it's absolutely necessary to realize how privileged we are by these four years of relative freedom.
This year, when you're being thrown out of a window at a party, think about what you'd like to change if you got to serve in the U.S. Senate. While you're wrestling your brother to the floor at Top of the Hill on the night of your 21st birthday, think about new ways you could raise money for a worthy cause. While you're rioting on Franklin Street after we beat Duke this year, figure out if you'd rather learn Mandarin or Swahili.
As Baudelaire says, "Get drunk!" But don't limit yourself to blue cups and vodka shots; also get drunk on literature, volunteering and writing witty, urbane columns for The Daily Tar Heel. If you overspecialize in either, you won't have gotten all you can out of this wonderful place.
