What are your plans for this weekend? For many Guilford College students drinking will play a major role in their weekend. Sobriety is a choice that few make, but there are some students on campus who have cut drinking out of their lives. Binge drinking on college campuses has long been termed an epidemic. According to Denise Witmer, an author of popular parenting books, 44 percent of college students are binge drinkers and the numbers are rising.

If you think Guilford is an exception just listen hard on any weekend night and you’ll be sure to hear a chorus of drunken revelry somewhere on campus.

The reasons for this are not hard to understand. Drinking makes people feel less self-conscious and more socially lubricated. It can be challenging to find friends in a new environment and alcohol is easy to have in common. When students come to college, it is usually their first time away from their family and without parental supervision, many young people tend to go a little nuts.

“A big thing with the freshman class is that lots of freshmen are having their first experiences with alcohol so they don’t know their limits yet,” said one first-year drinker who preferred to remain anonymous. “They just get really belligerently drunk and they don’t know what they’re doing”.

Many feel as though sobriety is not even an option at college but sober students are not hard to find. There are a wide variety of reasons that people stay sober: religion, health, ethical or taste.

“I decided to not drink because my previous drinking experiences proved unsatisfactory,” said sophomore Ross Brubeck. “I figured many of my moral strongholds would go out the window once I got to college and I decided I had to stay strong on something.”

“It’s hard to find other guys who don’t want to get drunk,” said freshman Bryce Bjornson who has chosen to remain sober while at college. “Hanging out with people who are drinking is hard because they are in a different place then I am. I have never liked the way people drink. It’s not the consumption of alcohol that bothers me it’s the abuse.”

There can be no denying that alcohol abuse is a major problem. I’ve been seeing an awful lot of ambulances on campus this year and if I was a betting man I’d put my money on alcohol poisoning as the predominant reason for these frequent visits from our friendly neighborhood EMTs.

I don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with drinking alcohol. As long as you know your limits and feel safe while you drink, alcohol can be great fun. I turned 21 in October and have indulged in frequent visits to local bars ever since.

My problem with drinking is that for many people it becomes the only source of fun, the only way to feel socially comfortable and the only thing they have in common with their friends. Getting wasted every now and then is not a problem in my book. Getting wasted all the time, with people who you don’t know, or drinking until you’re ill are problems and unfortunately they are widespread on Guilford campus.

Having fun and relaxing is supposed to be the point and drinking all the time is not relaxing. It wears you out, weakens your body and mind and can strain your social relationships. If you can’t think of something to do on the weekends without drinking heavily, you aren’t thinking hard enough.

For those who need a little extra help, recent forums for planning sober socials have been held. “We want to put on events that you wouldn’t even want to be drinking for,” Bjornson who has been attending the forums, said. “We don’t want to force people to be sober we want to give them things to do without being drunk.”

That’s a plan I can get behind.