Stereotypes In Thomas Vander Ven's Getting Wasted

Most people would probably associate college age men and women with drinking alcohol in excessive amounts. This is a typical stereotype of college students. It seems that a lot of college students just assume the responsibility of drinking because they are college students. This seems to be the norm. Thomas Vander Ven, in his book Getting Wasted, studied college students on three different campuses in order to decipher the mystery behind the reason college students tend to drink (Vander Ven 2011). He wanted to know why they drink so much, how they drink so much, and how do they get over the after effects of their heavy drinking. Vander Ven’s argument is considered to be a sociological argument because throughout the book, he makes connections

One such pattern is that levels of alcohol abuse are related to trouble. Another pattern is that students who are also sports fans are more likely to drink than a student who is not a sports fan. One theory found in a few different chapters of Dalton Conley’s book You May Ask Yourself, is the theory of stereotypes. A stereotype is a fixed idea about someone or something. One common stereotype is that of different roles based on a person’s gender. In her memoir Crossing, Deidre McCloskey shares some characteristics about her transformation between a man named Donald to a woman named Deirdre. She shares some of the differences she feels between her male self and her female self. Some of the supposed female roles are liking cooking, listens more intently, is less angry, less interested in sports, she has more friends, she

As Dalton Conley suggests, being white comes with privileges. Some of the privileges include finding a hairdresser who can cut and fix your hair type, not having to educate your children to fear racial stigmas, bandages that come in “flesh” tones will be similar to your skin tone, shape and body odor are not reflective of your race, and many more (Conley 2015). In short, your race does not define who you are. Race may play a role in how drunk a person can get. Minority students, such as African Americans, feel that if they appear “out of control,” they will be judged more harshly than your average white student getting “out of control” drunk. This could be in direct correlation with the fact that 50% of white students binge drink while only 22% of black college students participate in binge drinking (Vander Ven 2011). The stereotype of race makes some students feel that they are more likely to get in trouble if they get excessive drunk because they are a minority