Intoxicants Abroad

THIS IS NOT AN adventure I'm proud of (and please don't tell my parents!). While on a European foreign-study program, another Dartmouth student and I got drunk at one of the famous wine caves in Beaune, France. We stumbled to the train station and took the 20minute ride back to Dijon. From there we took a taxi to our hostel.

The taxi driver knew we were drunk, so he took five right turns in a row, doubling his fare. (At least, that's what he seemed to be doing.) Upon arrival at the hostel we refused to pay the fare. The driver not knowing English and we not knowing French (I was on break from a program in Spain), the situation quickly deteriorated. The driver grabbed my backpack and tried to drive off with it. I reached into his moving car and grabbed it back. The driver got out and I was about to pop him one when the Dartmouth student grabbed me and told me to get indoors.

Once inside the hostel, webegan , to register when the doors flew open and the livid driver stormed in. Somehow (alter a belligerent exchange,we ended up with our hands around each other's throat. My Dartmouth friend broke up the fight and the driver left. We stood in the lobby of the hostel drunk and embarrassed; for ourselves, for our country, and for our school.

While getting into a fight is not a common thing to happen to a Dartmouth student while abroad, getting drunk is. Drinking to excess has become something of a sorry tradition for Dartmouth's two off-campus programs, Language Study Abroad and Foreign Study. The reason seems to be that Dartmouth students simply transplant the whole party scene—the frats, the drinking, the scamming, the booting.

"Dartmouth students take the drinking culture with them," says Marsha Swislocki, a Dartmouth associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese.

One of the main purposes of the off-campus programs is to experience other cultures and to meet new people. But as Professor Swislocki locki says, " "When drinking becomes the goal of a social occasion, it impedes the interaction between Americans and people of the host country." She adds that it is her f department's policy that drunken behavior is grounds for being sent home "on the first available flight."

So how do you stop people from doing what is normal to them? The solution may lie in alleviating the problem at Dartmouth.

As for me, well, I've definitely cut back—l haven't been in a fight since France —but I still drink. How ever, I drink responsibly. Well, actually, once in a while I do lose control and get drunk, but that's happening less and less. Just as I've learned to speak Spanish, I've learned that drinking in moderation is a lot more fan than embarrassing myself in front of my host family—which is something others have not been lucky enough to avoid.

Ross Nova is a Whitney Campbell Intern at thismagazine.