Two years ago, Clemson University students took the phrase “party til you drop” to another level, as the past-occupancy crowd fell through the first floor of a clubhouse (there were no serious injuries).
College parties are not known for their safety and deference to authority, whether it’s maximum capacity limits, alcohol, or the coronavirus. As people are somehow surprised to learn, college students who are returning to campus (where masks may be required in the library and 6-foot distancing is enforced in the classrooms) are nevertheless returning to the parties they left behind in March. And the young revelers’ social life doesn’t always involve physical distance.
Colleges are handing out suspensions, evictions, and other sanctions for students caught partying. But this was always the inevitable result of colleges bringing students back to campus. College-aged students know that the coronavirus won’t hit them as hard as it will hit their grandparents, and a lockdown-restricted summer and a massive unemployment surge have left them looking for an outlet that off-campus houses are now providing.
There are nearly 20 million college students in the United States. This is a year of their college life that they won’t get back, so it’s no surprise that they are going to take advantage of a return to campus to live it up before colleges start to reverse themselves and send them back home.
People are becoming more and more resistant to letting lockdown restrictions and social distancing orders interfere with their normal lives, as six months of lockdowns finally meet the all-important autumn season. It’s no surprise, then, that college students (the demographic most closely associated with rule-breaking and recklessness) are going to party until they drop.
