Do you need to go out in college to have the most "fulfilling" experience?

Going to clubs, bars and house parties with your friends can be a great way to make lasting memories in college. But what happens if you don’t like going out?

by Jasmine Koch and Marissa Davis

College is a time to learn about yourself and the world around you. For some it is also a time to shotgun beers in a frat basement or guzzle nips of vodka before heading into the club.

But still, for some students this isn’t how they choose to spend their weekends. Which leads people to wonder, if you aren’t partying in college...what are you doing instead?

A screenshot of a party flyer that was being shared amongst Quinnipiac students in early September

Going out in college is not a new phenomenon and for many going out also means consuming alcoholic beverages, regardless of whether they are of the legal drinking age or not. According to a 2015 report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism about 60 percent of college students ages 18 to 22 drank alcohol in the past month. The same study found that almost two out of three college students engaged in binge drinking during that same timeframe.

The 2017 Quinnipiac University Clery report shows a staggering increase in the amount of liquor law violation referrals between 2015 with the total of 362 referrals and 2016 with the total of 445.

According to a survey conducted with 42 Quinnipiac University students, 76 percent go out to bars, clubs or parties one or two times a week. Approximately 70 percent of these students agree that choosing to go out versus not go out in college has an effect on your social life.

What a Friday night at Gotham Citi Cafe looks like

“I go out to have a good time and hang out with friends,” said Bianca Torres, Quinnipiac student. Torres says that even if she doesn’t get a chance to go out to bars or clubs, she makes sure to hang out with friends and drink on campus. When asked what she believe college culture meant she replied, “Getting drunk.”

However, when asked what college culture means to her, Czarisse Javier, also a Quinnipiac student replied, “College culture means being swamped with work and just trying to survive college.”

Javier also said that she prefers drinking with friends at the dorm instead of going to a bar because she feels more relaxed. “It’s less stressful for me because I like being chill and just sitting on the couch with some friends.”

Alyssa Zummo, a senior at Quinnipiac University, can count on two hands the amount of times that she has gone out in college. “I never really had an interest in going out or partying ... I don’t like crowds, waiting outside in line, taking Ubers or being out late.”

Rachel Croke, also a senior at Quinnipiac, feels the same way.

“I don’t like having to spend money on Ubers and overpriced drinks and cover charges. I also don’t like crowds and waiting in lines for a long time, especially if it’s freezing out,” said Croke.

Quinnipiac student spending a Friday night in to finish up some work

As a residential assistant, Mackenzie Campbell often sees firsthand the effects that going out can have on students. “I personally think that a lot of the times the underclassmen get carried away with how often they go out. I would say it’s a bad thing if it happens every day of the week, I have seen on multiple occasions students getting very intoxicated and needing to be transported to the hospital and then the next day they are going out again.”

Although Zummo does not fully regret her decision to not party a lot in college, she does believe that it had an effect on her social life. “If I had gone out more I think I would have met a lot more people.”

“I think college culture at Quinnipiac is a majority of students that binge drink and enjoy partying.” Campbell believes that most students at Quinnipiac enjoy going out, which can marginalize the students who choose to not participate in that lifestyle.

An informal survey of 42 students revealed that 83 percent of students would go out more if they had the chance to do college over again. According to these results, the majority of Quinnipiac students do enjoy going to bars, clubs and parties, and if they had more time to do so they would probably do so more often.

For those students who do not enjoy going out, Quinnipiac offers other activities during the weekend. Around 75 percent of students in our survey agreed that Quinnipiac does provide good activities for students who choose not to go out.

“I always recommend to my residents that they go to the events held by SGA or the alternate Saturday night programs that are put on ... Residential Life started events Saturday nights called Late Night Lounges that are held around 10 o’clock," said Campbell. "We hold events such as trivia and serve the residents food, it is a good opportunity for floor bonding and helps us know that our residents our on campus safe,” Choosing whether or not to go out to bars, clubs or parties in college can be a big decision for Quinnipiac students, especially underclassmen, but it seems like the best option for most students is to enjoy everything in moderation according to those interviewed.

Going out with your friends in college is a great opportunity to make lasting memories and meet new people but it’s also great to focus on relaxing and taking advantage of many of the free activities Quinnipiac offers.

“I definitely could’ve saved myself wasted time, energy, money and ‘bad nights’ by not going out, but I also would’ve missed out on a lot of fun I have had with my friends and meeting new people,” exclaimed Croke.

Check out this map of the local clubs and bars visited by Quinnipiac students!

Editor's Note

Newsgathering:

We first filtered through Tweetdeck to try to find tweets that would be valuable to our story that we could embed. We searched using several key terms and narrowing our search throughout. We chose to embed the tweet you see above in our story because it describes a fun night a Toad's place, a club visited frequently by Quinnipiac students.

For the second aspect of news gathering, we decided to crowd source by creating a survey monkey and asking different groups of students on campus to complete it. We also used social media like Twitter and Facebook to crowdsource.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MWR9GPP

Distribution:

For distribution, we tweeted out quotes from interviews to get a sense of how interested other students are in our story. We also did this because if other students see a name they recognize, they might be compelled to keep reading.

We have also been "tweeting our beat," by sharing our survey and quotes on Facebook and Twitter to help gain a following for our story before we post the whole thing.

Audience Engagement:

For audience engagement we shared our story on our social media pages considering it is a QU focused story and a lot of the people we engage with on social media have connections to Quinnipiac.

Also for audience engagement there is content on Tweet Deck relating to college culture and there are some sources that are verified accounts and have a large following, that we can retweet that will solidify our story and some of the information that we report on.