Probing Indian-American “Drinking Culture” at Cornell By Francis C. Assisi

Email this page Print this page

It is the first academic survey of “Indian American drinking culture” in a college campus and was conducted by interviewing a sample of male and female Indian American Cornell undergraduates.

As a result the student research group has explored a new frontier with its study on drinking among Indian American college students. They say their study focuses on a group of "students who underwent an ideological shift during college that caused them to re-analyze their values and begin drinking, after at least a whole year of abstaining from alcohol altogether."

The biggest alcohol-related fear that students had was that of their parents finding out, the study notes. For example, when discussing her freshman experiences, one student said, "my parents would call every weekend night, at around 11 [pm], to see what I was doing. If I was at a party, I'd have to run to the bathroom or a quiet place and pretend I was in my room studying."

Through their descriptions of home and college experiences, our own knowledge of both traditional Indian and Cornell culture, and outside research, we were able to identify themes that led up to the ideology change, and consequential adoption of mainstream Cornell culture, the student researchers say. In this context the researchers refer to the students as “switchovers.”

Who were the subjects of this study? They were 12 Indian-American Cornell undergraduates – five male, seven female - who began drinking only after their freshman year of college. Demographically, nine were from the northeast, one was from the Midwest, one was from the west, and one was from the south. When questioned about their religious affiliation, three students identified themselves as being Jain, and nine as Hindus.

FINDINGS

First of all the study reveals that all of the freshman students were shocked upon arriving at Cornell and witnessing the heavy drinking atmosphere among their senior Indian counterparts. All interviewees also indicated a struggle between a desire to maintain roots and yet still get the full experience of American college life.

The authors argue that the "switchovers" adopted mainstream American culture and that the "adoption of this culture and consequent ideological shift was caused by a combination of socialization needs, avoidance of fears, and academic pressures," including the desire to be popular among the opposite sex.

The study begins by claiming that the abstinent culture of the average Desi student can be attributed to the strong Hindu background and their parents’ primarily educational immigration motive.

However, upon entering college, the same Desi students realize that the culture found at Cornell is radically different from that which they were used to at home. They were particularly surprised that this culture, which so heavily promoted drinking and partying, was so willingly embraced by the college Indian community. One student did not “expect that this many Indian kids would drink” and was stunned as to how much Desi students did drink. They found that this new culture assigned significant value to “having fun” and recreation, as well as doing well in school: the “work-hard, party-hard” mentality that many of their non-Indian high school friends embodied, was also a value for many Desis at Cornell.

This new culture recognized that college was not only about working and studies, but also on “experiencing the college life”: dating, going to parties, and of course, drinking. In this culture, it was expected that Monday to Thursday was for working, and the weekend was for going out. In an attempt to avoid becoming an outsider, our subjects attended parties, partially socializing into the night scene, but still refused to drink. One reason for this was that they still had a strong group of abstinent friends with which to attend parties.

IDEOLOGY SHIFT

The authors explain that when Indian American students enter Cornell, many bring with them the mentality that drinking is wrong. This idea that drinking is “socially, religiously and morally unacceptable” is a commonly held belief among Indians. In Indian culture, it is believed that drinking is unacceptable and will inevitably impede one’s ability to succeed. This includes social drinking, or drinking “in moderation”. One of the students said that her “parents didn’t want [her] doing things that would get in the way of school, like dating [and especially drinking].” The belief that alcohol is unacceptable agrees with the Indian belief that academic excellence is a student’s number one priority. These and other beliefs comprise the traditional Indian ideology.

Restricted access to the outside world, combined with high academic expectations, is what shaped the traditional Indian ideology shared by our students, the authors explain. “At home these Indian students dealt with rigid family values that molded their ideology, so it was only natural for them to begin rethinking their ideologies upon coming to college and being faced with a different set of circumstances.

Many of the students apparently altered their life goals between the time that they entered college and the time that they began drinking, the study notes. According to the authors, this indicates a shift in ideology.

For example, one student’s goal during her freshman year was to do well in school so that she could prove to herself and her parents that she could in fact handle a Cornell workload. She never anticipated partying and socializing as being a big part of her life, but “the people [she] lived with went out to parties a lot so she went with them once in a while” and became exposed to alcohol. Similarly another student’s goal was to maintain a primarily academic focus. His goal was to excel academically, compensating for the fact that he did not get into MIT. During his freshman year, he placed “an emphasis on school work, not being social,” going out to parties only occasionally. Another male student said that his goal during freshman year was to “do well academically and get a high GPA.” A third male student’s goals were “not to get kicked out of Cornell, not to drink, to make good friends, to have a girlfriend, and to socialize.”

One female student described her parents as being extremely overprotective and sheltering during her freshman year. Her parents often called her to check up on her and make sure she was doing her schoolwork. The continued presence of her parents in her college life was primarily why she felt school had to be her main focus freshman year.

When asked why she thinks so many Indians drink at Cornell, one student said, “in general Indian parents are conservative, so kids probably felt restricted before and when they got to college they feel that they could let loose and not live under parents’ rules.” For these students, college represented a first experience away from home while on their own, and therefore their first chance to make their own decisions and not worry about what their parents would say or think.

When these Indian students came to college they tried to apply their old understandings to the drinking culture on campus and succeeded for some time, but eventually came up with a new understanding to make sense of their new surroundings, the authors say.

The study found that by sophomore year, these students had indeed altered their goals and put in place a new ideology that allowed them to begin drinking alcohol. One student said that her goals changed during her sophomore year when she realized that “it is important to have fun in college” before she has to go into the real world. For her, school was still significantly important, but socialization had moved up a few steps on the priority ladder as well.

Another student said that he was more social during his sophomore year, and was willing to accept a slight drop in grades in return for being able to make more friends. He realized that school was not everything and that balance between work and play was important. A third student says that his goals now, after starting to drink, place less importance on getting good grades. Now, his academic efforts have been reduced, as he just tries to “get by” with B’s instead of striving for A’s in all of his classes. He too prioritized, discovering that being social was more important to him than getting good grades. A male student says that his goal not to drink has changed. As a common denominator, all of these students explicitly commented that they now thought that drinking was not as big a deal as they thought it was before they started drinking.

After being at Cornell for a year these students were exposed to a new set of beliefs, the authors observe. For these four students the belief that doing well academically leads to success was replaced by the belief that a balance between work and social life is necessary. With this new ideology in place, drinking became an acceptable practice. Their old ideology left no room for alcohol, which serves to explain their abstinence during their first year. Coming to Cornell introduced a new ideology changed the beliefs they had coming in to Cornell. As they adapted to the Indian culture at Cornell, they embraced the ideology of most college students that drinking is an acceptable practice. After internalizing this new ideology, these students then allowed themselves to begin drinking.

The rigidity of values of traditional Indian culture is strictly superficial, the authors observe. “The older generation wants to believe that the values and morals of their parents have been strictly preserved and are fully adhered to today. However, this is simply false. In reality there exists an underground world full of Indian alcoholics.” That is individuals who were “Indian superheroes by day”, but were heavy drinkers by night.

For example, during his sophomore year one student starting dating an Indian girl who drank heavily. Although his girlfriend did not match up to his typology of a “proper Indian girl”, they both identified themselves as Indians, and he felt as though their relationship itself was acceptable. He soon began to equate her drinking habits with a new type of Indian typology.

In other instances, students began drinking after using the first year to assimilate into the academic lifestyle at Cornell. One student spent the first year confused about his identity while on campus, waited until winter break, when he had proven to himself that he could get good grades, and then started drinking

CAUSES OF IDEOLOGY CHANGE

One of the main reasons students chose to begin drinking after their first year at Cornell involved the establishment of strong friendships, the study points out.

At this point in time, they had developed close friendships which enabled them let their guard down in social settings. One student said she never wanted to drink because “[she] didn’t like the feeling of not being in complete control of [her] actions.”

Another student expressed this when she described her first drinking experience. “The only reason I felt comfortable drinking was because [my best friend] was there with me to watch out for me or to make sure I didn’t do something I would regret.” The presence of trustworthy friends provided these students with a sense of security. With the comfort of having good friends around them they felt that they could drink and not have to worry about any negative consequences.

Drinking also afforded students a way to conform to the "work hard, play hard" ideology shared by many members of the broader Cornell community. As college went on, they found that an increasing percentage of their friends had started drinking, leaving them to feel like outsiders.

Another reason that some of the switchovers chose to start drinking was because they wanted to live up to the expectations of their peers. This was especially true for the males. Some male students began drinking because the girls they were interested in drank and they wanted to impress them. For several male switchovers, the need to impress girls was a factor that influenced their decision to start drinking.

After the students had switched over, they found themselves to be better assimilated into the Cornell culture. Whereas before the students often preferred to stay at home on weekends to study or relax, they now blended in with the rest of Cornell's Indian drinkers, often starting their weekends off on a Thursday or even a Wednesday night. One student said that now he frequently “goes to the bars on a Thursday. Sometimes, [he’ll] even go on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, if [he doesn’t] have anything due the next morning.

The study concludes that desi students’ alcohol consumption served as a rite of integration.

One female student said, "I'm pretty crazy as it is. I was afraid of the things I would do if I got drunk." However, the experiences of freshman year provided the necessary learning experience to make the students realize that drinking didn't always turn people into a “raging lunatic."

A student promptly summed this up in her description of the Indian drinking scene at Cornell. "There were times when people got drunk, but most of the time, people were just buzzed. At a typical party, you’d see a couple of kids that were wasted, and everyone else would be pretty normal." Another student recalls that even when he thought his friends were very drunk, they could act normal when they had to. He remembers, "Once my friend's mom called him while we were walking home from a party. I thought he was going to say something stupid, but he played it off pretty well. She still doesn't know that he drinks."

Another female switchover used freshman year to learn how to hide things from their parents. She had a boyfriend throughout the latter half of freshman year, despite not being allowed to date. She said, "I realized that my parents weren't here with me, and that they didn't have to know everything I did. I mean, as long as I didn't get into trouble or do badly in school, they wouldn't have a reason to ask questions." She later used this technique to drink without her parents finding out. By concealing their drinking habits or coming to the realization that parent's did not care as much as our student's thought, the experiences of our students during their freshman year helped eliminate this fear of parents as a reason not to drink.

Freedom from Inhibitions

Freedom from inhibitions was another reason that Indian-American students found drinking appealing. One switchover held that before “[she] began drinking [she] would sometimes wish that [she] could be as open as some of her friends were when they drank. [She] especially wished that she could get up enough nerve to tell boys that [she] was interested in them.” The desire to be more free and open is what enticed this student to drink. She wanted to be able to say what was on her mind without worrying about the consequences. Many of the other switchovers felt the same way. A male switchover said, “One of my friends started drinking a couple months before I did and I saw how much more relaxed he was at parties. He went from standing in the corner at a party, to actually dancing. That was the first time I found myself wondering what I would act like if I was drunk.” This student’s sentiment was echoed by many other switchovers. They saw how alcohol gave people an excuse to act in ways they normally would be afraid to. Talking to members of the opposite sex and dancing were what sparked several students’ curiosity when it came to drinking.

The Desi American trio conducted the study in 2006 while they were students at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. And it went on to win an award for best undergraduate papers on alcohol use and abuse and campus life.

According to an email from Maneka Singh, this is how the study came about. “Samir Patel (currently a law student at Notre Dame) and I were in an organizational behavior class called "the culture of organizations." Our professor, William (Bill) Sonnenstuhl, asked us to choose an aspect of drinking culture at Cornell to write a research report. We chose to focus on drinking among the Indian Americans at Cornell because we were both a big part of that culture and because we had been noticing that more and more of our Indian friends who swore they would never drink, began drinking all of a sudden. We decided to find out the cause of this phenomenon. At the time I was the president of Cornell's Society for India so it was easy to get people to participate in the study.” She says that perhaps studies should be done at other schools to see if they come up with similar conclusions.

Nausheen Rokerya too said the paper started out as part of an undergraduate course she was taking at Cornell. She says the Indian community “is a very active one there, and its drinking patterns are distinct from those of other groups.” Rokerya adds: “The study revealed new insights into the effect of culture on lifestyle formation. The information we gathered could be used to draw conclusions broader than those pertaining to just drinking habits. However, this was not the initial aim of the paper, and therefore was not addressed. It was a side realization.”