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Having been a student quite recently, I was surprised to read this week two stories on the BBC News website vaguely about student drinking. The first was about sports team initiation ceremonies, following news that the BBC has been filming such things at the University of Gloucestershire. Regardless of how representative the BBC's footage, this has caused some comment and disapproval, so as is their wont, they followed it up in the “Magazine” section of the site with a story on teetotal students. Some teetotal students are quoted complaining about how they feel shunned and left out because everyone wants to drink. Both of these stories were, indeed, news to me.

When I was a boy my parents ran a pub, and the familial attitude towards alcohol was always pretty indifferent, not mystifying it as the demon drink, nor glorifying it as a badge of adulthood, so when I was in sixth form I had a drink or two at friends' parties and similar events, but I wasn't a heavy drinker; I never snuk out to nightclubs; I'd go as far as saying I was never really drunk. Having heard of the hard-drinking reputation of students—corroborated by my parents, who it is claimed were goers in their time—I was quite nervous that on coming up to Cambridge I'd be getting plastered several times a week.

I needn't have worried. From the very first week, it was clear that the threatened peer pressure would never materialise. Sure enough, the main social event in freshers' week was a pub crawl, but on the same evening an alternative social event was laid-on, starting with LaserQuest (the local LaserQuest is, alas, no more) and touring the town before ending up playing Jenga in the College bar. It was for teetotallers and those who didn't like the sound of the pub crawl, so drinking was perfectly optional, and it was (and is to this day) well attended. I enjoyed myself that night, and the pattern continued for another three years. As far as I can tell, pretty much all society events aim to accommodate drinkers and non-drinkers alike. (I exclude specialised societies like rugby teams, wine-tasting societies, drinking societies, and I guess the Buddhist society, though I wouldn't put it past the Buddhists to offer alcohol at meetings just to avoid imposing on any non-Buddhist attendees.)

In a sense, this is a case where the lowest-common-denominator wisdom of the marketplace really does tend to the best solution. It's traditional for each society to hold a “squash” at the start of the year to attract new members. It's simply good business to offer inducements to attend the squash in the form of a promise of free alcohol, but likewise, it's good business to ensure non-drinkers can enjoy your event just as much. As with the squash, so the cocktail nights, garden parties, dinners, &c. Teetotallers are a large enough minority to be worth courting, and societies and the university don't want to be seen excluding people because of their religion.

Like most personal choices, tolerance is to be found in abundance here. Even among my undergrad friends, you could find pretty much every attitude on the spectrum: non-drinking for religious reasons, non-drinking for other reasons, non-drinking only in term time to concentrate on work, moderate drinking at social events, and heavy drinkers. In fact, of my closest friends there were (and still are) more non-drinkers than drinkers, so it's quite common for our parties to be ‘dry’, simply for the reason that it's no more fun to be the only drinker in a group than the only teetotaller: peer pressure in the opposite direction.

Two or three summers ago, one of my friends invited all of us to his parents' house for a weekend, to play Capture the Flag in the nearby woods. His parents completely failed to realise the implications of this. Certainly, they were expecting that Saturday night would essentially be an all-night party at their house, and they knew that the dozen or so attendees were almost all 21±3, but they were most surprised that at this party no alcohol was consumed, no loud music was played, and nothing was broken. They were perhaps slightly more surprised that “all night” went to bed at about two o'clock and got up again in dribs and drabs from eight the following morning. I mention this because I think it's quite representative of my experience of student drinking.

I'm not saying that the people quoted in the BBC's article were lying about peer pressure, just that the BBC have done their usual impression of a reputable news agency and told us only half the story. In particular, their claim in a photo caption that “Hijinks, alcohol and socialising are inextricably linked,” does nothing but promote an incorrect view that will make perceived peer pressure increase. And with respect to Mr. Wiley, who left Aberystwyth after three days because of “the constant pressure to drink” and reports that “It is also very difficult to find a girlfriend as most of my friends find girls on nights out, whereas I do not. Plus people see it as a bit weird that I don't drink, which appears to put them off,” I suggest that staying a little longer might have taught him about sampling error, and that there may be another reason he has trouble finding a girlfriend.

I don't want to say it for fear of being thought a snob, but perhaps this is a Cambridge thing after all. The academic challenge really is quite enough on its own without also waking up feeling like death every morning. Perhaps if you have the supposed cream of the world's undergraduate population in one place, it follows that peer pressure to work hard will be much stronger than to drink hard.

To be honest, I can think of exactly one particularly bad outcome of US-style hazing, and that's the 60's film Ring of Terror, nicely demolished on MST3k. It is dull and the plot absurd, centring around an initiation prank by some medical students. To be honest, I think the film is bad enough on its own to justify banning hazing pranks.