When I chose Marquette almost four years ago, I never thought I’d have to adjust to a different culture. I’m from the Midwest, after all, accustomed to ugly winters and even uglier accents.
But there’s something significantly different in the state of Wisconsin: the boozing.
The two have had a long love affair, complicated by demands of the law: it was the last state to bump the drinking age up to 21 in 1985, and only happened because the federal government threatened to take away highway funding. It’s also the only state that considers a first drunk driving offense a traffic violation instead of a crime.
Beyond the law, Wisconsin has its own definition of drunk driving: a rite of passage. Around 40,000 Wisconsinites are charged with DUIs each year, which is more than double the rate in other Midwestern states like Iowa and Indiana. Wisconsin also has the most fatal alcohol-related snowmobile accidents in the country.
This is news to no one. The drinking culture in Wisconsin has been a punch line for decades, and it only takes a few weeks of living here to get in on the joke.
But after reading the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s exposé on 35 Milwaukee cops with off-duty DUIs, that joke becomes far less humorous.
According to the Journal Sentinel’s two-year investigation, the drunk-driving officers received punishment, but hardly: in most cases, they received 10-day suspensions or were sentenced to fines that their insurance companies covered.
“This is an issue of concern everywhere,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn in the article, “but when you couple that issue with what is frankly acknowledged — too often humorously — with a culture of drinking in Wisconsin, you have a recipe for serious problems.”
The people who are supposed to be curbing Milwaukee’s drunken tendencies seem to be plagued with the same vices, making it no wonder why we’re engulfed in this culture of reckless alcoholic behavior.
Most of us are under the impression that we will graduate from Marquette untouched by that culture, and, until then, we will remain safe from the dangers of drunk drivers, who are almost non-existent on our campus. But that mindset is a danger in itself.
It’s difficult to distinguish college culture from Wisconsin’s. A sloppy booze-fueled scene can easily be labeled “so college” or “so Wisconsin.” In college, alcohol is at the heart of sporting events and parties, but at Marquette, the presence of booze is fortified thanks to where we live. We see adults drinking just as much as we are at basketball games and at bars, and since we’re still young enough to look to our elders for authority, we define their behavior as normal.
It may be normal here, but that doesn’t make it OK.
Last Saturday, this conflict presented itself to me when I had a costume party to attend but no taste whatsoever for booze. I had two choices: stay in and watch Hocus Pocus or suck it up and drink Keystone Lights.
It wasn’t until I was in full costume and walking into the party when I realized: I didn’t have to drink.
So I filled my cup with ice water and rooted myself on the dance floor, immune to the inevitable drunken drama unfolding around me. In doing so, I avoided a few hundred calories, and the next morning, I woke up perfectly intact and able to recall every detail from the party.
It took an experience like that for me to realize just how heavy a presence alcohol has had in my life throughout the past three years. I’d never gone to a party for the sole purpose of getting drunk, but I’d also never gone with the intention of drinking water.
Wisconsin’s love affair with beer is easy to make light of, but it affects our lifestyles more than we realize. When it comes to alcohol in Milwaukee, examples of “normal” are few and far between, so our choices have to be based off our limits and, most importantly, the law.