Study abroad at Cambridge is certainly full of perks as you have seen in my past blogposts, but it also comes with some potential dangers that you should be aware of, one of which is drinking. While I have alluded to this occasionally, I want to focus on it in this post in light of somewhat unfortunate events that took place at my college's bop this past week.
What is a bop for starters? It's essentially a themed disco party, so you come to a bop dressed in themed-clothing. For example, our first bop was "back to school night," so people wore clothing resembling uniforms they might have worn while growing up. In addition to themes, given that the legal drinking age in the UK is 18, there is certainly a lot of booze to go around at these events, which brings me to what happened last week.
It was the second bop of the term, and while I did not attend (I was too tired from an early morning rowing practice), the level of drunkeness and rowdiness supposedly got so bad that administration sent out a stern email to the entire college about the incident. While word of mouth suggested that the degree of drunkeness and rowdiness was debatable, even from staff members who were administering alcohol during the bop, some of the post-bop incidents I heard about were somewhat disturbing. Apparently, one person was so drunk that he/she left food splattered all over the kitchen, but nobody bothered to clean it up until Monday. Someone else supposedly peed on the grass. I also found evidence of vomiting in various places in college the next day (stains don't go away that quickly).
So why share these somewhat graphic details? I'm not trying to deter you away from Cambridge, let alone drinking in the first place, but I want to make sure that you are aware of these issues. When you're at Cambridge, there will be a lot of people pushing you to drink, and very few, if any, cautioning you about the dangers. What would have happened if someone had gotten seriously hurt because that person or someone else was under the influence? It is especially crucial that we CME students consider such risks. Although we are in Cambridge and can legally drink, we still have to abide by MIT rules, which require us to be at least 21 before we can drink in accordance with US laws. While this part of the rulebook is not strictly enforced in practice with regards to CME (so feel free to drink if you really want to!), do be aware that if you do get into an incident because you were under the influence, MIT will come down on you hard with the rulebook.
To conclude, the result of this incident was that bops have been cancelled for the rest of term, which was disappointing since I had wanted to attend the Christmas-themed bop at the end of the term so as to "celebrate" making it through 1/3 of Cambridge! However, at least the cancellation makes what would have been the next bop more appropriate, as it was titled "Abopalypse." :P
Sorry if this post was kind of a downer, but it's better to have the cold water thrown on you now than say when you're at Cambridge! I hope to post something more upbeat soon though! :)