Anyone would be hard-pressed not to call UB a "party campus." We hold two or more parties every weekend; any student who bothers to go to classes on Fridays will tell you that there are twice as many flyers for the latest party than students in class.
Are we a party school? Does it even matter?
UB loves to party, or at least I'm sure it seems that way. To many students, there is nothing quite like the life of a party.
Just last weekend, a few of us decided that we were in need of some downtown clubbing and we met up with friends from Stony Brook who dropped by for a visit. None of us knew it wasn't the greatest timing. It was a drizzling Saturday night and unfortunately for the Stony kids, they were met with mostly empty bars and clubs that would've normally been packed.
But settling for nothing less, we showed them a great night just by our craziness and rocking out to some rare techno remixes at Level Nightclub. Before the night ended, one of them said, "Wow, Buffalo knows how to party! Parties at Stony are so boring."
Not too long ago, UB was ranked sixth of the Top 20 Party Schools on Princeton Review's "The Best 345 Colleges: 2003 Edition." While we haven't been back on the Top 20 since then, UB just cannot seem to escape from our resident beer-belly frat boys or funneling, bar dancing chicks.
Funneling chicks... sound familiar? Thank god Tyson Ritter chose Emily to funnel that beer during Fall Fest. It would have been thrilling to be on stage with the Rejects but it would have also been embarrassing if he picked someone with my funneling skills. But luckily for us, he picked Emily who proved to the All-American Rejects that all of UB can party, even those who didn't even go to Fall Fest.
We know how to party? Well yeah, I guess we do. We have a whole street dedicated to nothing but partying: Chippewa. On good nights (for partiers, bad nights for drivers), the whole street is like one big dance floor.
Does that really make us as a party school?
We drink. Which college or university doesn't? Not only are we a large university but also the majority of us live on-campus and away from mom and dad. With college drinking, it seems that every guy you stand next to is a binge drinker and every girl you sit next to in class talks about the ten shots she did last night.
With so many people, of course it seems like every other person you brush shoulders with went to that house party last Friday night. Who wants to admit they really were at Capen's Silent Study Center buried under piles of books, playing Mozart on their iPod and that they did ten shots of espresso instead of 151?
With Emily representing UB on stage the rest of us must have her unique talent, right? The fact is, though, most of us probably can't do that. I'll admit to choking on liquid coming down at the pull of gravity but who cares? No one has to know that because Ritter didn't select me.
So while we might look like a party school with Chippewa and Emily leading the army of partygoers, there is so much more to UB. It might seem great that we're cool and hip but for me personally, it just shouldn't be that big of a deal. For me, we have by far more impressive things to show off to the nation.
Buffalo is the second poorest city in the nation. Yet even with that standing, Buffalo is still on the map. We're not dead to this world. It would be easy to imagine Buffalo falling off the face of this world and no one every noticing. But that's not true. There are plenty of people who love this city and for some reason unbeknownst to us all stay in it. And that keeps the second poorest city alive.
While we may have ranked on the Top 20 Party Schools four years ago, we are currently one of the nation's leading research universities as well. UB is also has the largest state-organized medical school, academic library collections of all the SUNY schools, public flagship university, and one of the most diverse campuses around. It's things like that that make me proud to be a student here.
Anyway, our Friday nights would feature a bit less partying if our sports teams were more entertaining. However, our athletic teams have just been pushed up to Division I from II. Our teams are struggling to compete with the big dogs, but they're still alive, right?
It all boils down to this: sure, we can. We can party, we can drink (or funnel, according to Emily) but just because we can doesn't mean we are. We can be a party school; we were on that list for a reason. But we've been off that list for the last four years.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. That's what college is really about: finding that you can do something but choosing not to. The rest of the campus reflects the fact that we make these choices. We can party, but we decided that there are better and more important things about this school than where all the booze is this upcoming weekend.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
