Jordan Ripley ENC 1102H 4/29/14 A Look at Alcohol Use at UCF Tailgating Memory Mall.

On any other day, its the long stretch of grass between the Student Union and the CFE Arena, a slice of peace and tranquility that cuts through the hustle and bustle of this busy campus. But not today. Today, hundreds of tents have popped up, lining both sides of the mall. People mill about everywhere, some old and some young, sitting around in lawn chairs, smiling and laughing. The sweet smell of smoked meat wafts in from a nearby barbecue. Everyones wearing black and gold. Today is a college football game day, and the tailgating has just begun. But beneath all the festivities and pageantry lies an uncomfortable reality: alcohol. While it would be nice to assume that all alcohol at this tailgate is being consumed legally and responsibly, that would unfortunately not be true. Underage drinking is often rampant, and many people are consuming far too much alcohol. And this isnt unique to UCF: virtually every major college struggles with this at their games. In this analysis, I will look at the social norms and expectations that go with alcohol use at college football tailgating, and attempt to explain these behaviors. To start off, I wanted to find out what power structures affect alcohol use at tailgates. At first, I thought that policies, enforced both by UCF and the local government, might have a strong effect on this. However, a study conducted by Laura Oster-Aaland and Clayton Neighbors showed that after a major university reversed a long-standing policy banning alcohol at

tailgating, the amount of alcohol consumed had no real change: people were going to drink, regardless of policies (Oster-Aaland, Neighbors 2007). This meant that something else was affecting the behaviors of tailgaters. Ultimately, after much research, I came to the conclusion that social norms and expectations were the biggest thing contributing to alcohol use. These norms and expectations can reveal themselves in many different ways. One study I read showed that tailgaters whose parents drink before games tend to themselves drink alcohol, regardless of age or gender (Abar, Turrisi, Abar 2011). This makes sense. Children, even in their late teens and early twenties, tend to model their behaviors after their parents behaviors. In this case, these students drink because its the norm. While UCF has only had an on-campus stadium, and thus tailgating traditions, for less than a decade, other schools have long-standing tailgating traditions. Just this September, I went with my family to the University of Florida, my fathers alma-mater, to see a football game. While walking to the stadium, we passed a highly-distinctive blue and orange RV that my dad immediately recognized from his time at the school, nearly thirty years ago! It only makes sense that longstanding tailgating traditions, including alcohol usage, would be passed down from generation to generation. Gender-linked expectations also plays a major role in alcohol use at tailgating events. Women, due to biological factors such as decreased levels of an alcohol-reducing enzyme and lower body water levels, typically absorb 30% more alcohol than men for each drink consumed. Naturally, this means that women should be, on average, drinking less than their male peers. However, this isnt always the case. A 2007 study of tailgating students showed that while nearly 3/5 of all tailgaters who drink are men, the women who do drink tend to experience more negative consequences associated with drinking, such as vomiting or violent behavior (Haun et. al 2007). This would imply that many women are trying to keep up with their male

counterparts alcohol consumption. Of course, this is incredibly dangerous: the aforementioned biological factors, combined with the fact that women tend to weigh less than their male counterparts, means that these women are often consuming far more alcohol than they think. In fact, a 130 pound woman will have twice the BAC of a 185 pound man drinking the same quantity of alcohol. Unfortunately, these expectations for women to keep up with their male friends, whether real or perceived, have a highly detrimental effect. However, the biggest social factor in determining alcohol consumption seems to be perception. A common theme that ran across all of the studies I looked at was that students consistently overestimated how much their peers were drinking, often by a sizable margin: one study showed that students estimated that their peers, on average, consumed over one more standard drinks worth of alcohol than was actually consumed (Oster-Aaland, Neighbors 2007). Naturally, this can lead to problems. As one author put it, in short, what one believes that others think and do has a profound impact on what one does (Neighbors et. al 2005). If students perceive that people around them are drinking more, they will drink more, since it seems expected of them to. Part of this disconnect between perception and reality might be a product of the space in which tailgating takes place. At UCF, most students and other people in their late teens and twenties tailgate directly on Memory Mall, and it usually becomes very crowded. The Mall, however, is not the only place where tailgating occurs; while it is the center of tailgating activities, one can usually find tailgaters in nearby parking lots, around the softball field, and in the grassy areas around the reflection pond and Colbourn Hall. These spaces are usually less crowded, and tend to be far more tame than the raucous party atmosphere of Memory Mall. A

student tailgating in Memory Mall might only see the people in the space around them, and assume that everyone else is drinking like that, when that is usually not the case. So far, Ive attempted to analyze UCF tailgating as a space. In her essay Unframing Models of Public Distribution, rhetoric scholar Jenny Edbauer explains the theory of rhetorical ecologies, where all rhetoric is connected, or never outside the networked interconnection of forces, energies, rhetorics, moods, and experiences, and shifts and evolves through time, rather than remaining static (Edbauer 2005). Going off of Edbauers theory, I have included a map of the rhetorical ecology that encompasses alcohol use at and around UCF, showing that tailgating is just one part of this ever changing web. Alcohol consumption at tailgating might be affected by factors within the rhetorical ecology: a pre-game drink special at Knight Library, for example, might decrease tailgating consumption, while a sale at Pats Liquor might increase tailgating consumption. In return, tailgating affects other parts of the rhetorical ecology: a larger than normal crowd at tailgating might result in strong sales in Pats Liquor, while a smaller than normal crowd, perhaps for a game with very little hype, might result in a stronger than expected crowd at Knight Library. These are just a couple of examples, and the map is by no means complete, but you get the picture that all of these parts of UCFs alcohol-related rhetorical ecology are all interconnected and constantly shifting. But work is not yet done. While Ive touched upon the power structures that affect UCF tailgating, and delved deeper into some of these examples, I still dont know what to do about it. Alcohol overconsumption is still a very large problem at UCF tailgating, and while Ive looked a bit at why it exists, we now need to look at how to change it. But by looking at tailgating not as an isolated space, but rather as part of this larger, evolving ecology, we might be able to determine just what we need to do.

Works Cited

Abar, Caitlin, Turrisi, Rob, and Abar, Beau. Brief Report: Tailgating as a Unique Context for Parental Modeling on College Student Alcohol Use. Journal of Adolescence 34.5 (2011): 1103-1106. ERIC. Web. 16 March, 2014. Edbauer, Jenny. Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 5-24. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 Apr. 2014 Haun, Jolie, et al. Game-Day Survey Results: Looking at Football Fan Alcohol-Related Behaviors. American Journal of Health Education 38.2 (2007): 91-96. ERIC. Web. 6 April 2014. Neighbors, Clayton, et al. Event-and Context- Specific Normative Misperceptions and HighRisk Drinking: 21st Birthday Celebrations and Football Tailgating. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 67.2 (0001): 282-289. FRANCIS. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. Oster-Aaland, Laura K., and Neighbors, Clayton. The Impact of a Tailgating Policy on Students Drinking Behavior and Perceptions. Journal of American College Health 5.3 (2007): 281-284. SPORTDiscus. Web. 12 March 2014.

Map: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zu2SfhbZz85g.kAVMVylVas28