The Objective

This website will act as my ethnographic journal as I begin to research the role of alcohol in college student social interaction. The location I will be focusing on is a small town liquor store in close vicinity to two colleges, making it the primary alcohol vendor for those two schools. Business flows according to the student schedule, with weekly rush hours appearing and disappearing like clockwork. The store sees its big business hours on Friday and Saturday nights, with students packing out the shop, eager to make their weekend purchases. With two hours until store closing, the parking lot becomes riddled with haphazardly parked vehicles as students rush in and out, greeting, socializing, and mapping out their nightly options. Carrying boxes full of bottles full of intoxicating fluids, the students return to their campuses to live out their uninhibited social desires.

Alcohol has been used as a social lubricant since the establishment of recorded history, giving godly substance to the Greek Dionysian festivals and fueling the underground social resistance of the American speakeasies. My study will focus on student socialization, providing details about the emerging concept of the weekend warriors, or those who live for the weekend. The weekend warrior in relation to the student, is one who commits to school and studies during the week, only to escape into the uninhibited pursuit of pleasure and fulfillment when the weekend arrives. Alcohol seems to be the key component to assisting the weekend warrior's often desperate search for relief. But Why?

Has alcohol become the medicine of choice for suppressing anxiety and unhappiness, acting as temporary relief from the pressures of the school system? Or is alcohol just a platform to obtain what is really at demand; human interaction and interpersonal communication? Has society become so detached from peer to peer interaction that it requires mind altering drugs to facilitate socialization? Perhaps alcohol is just another substance to combat society's growing vulnerability to social anxieties, an effort to meet increased social demands as a functioning member of the student body. Whatever the reason, the majority of students seem to be dependent on alcohol to race through the fast-paced weekends, visiting the liquor store like it is a weekly errand. In this lifestyle, where does the role of the liquor store lie, and what does the store do to encourage alcoholic consumption?

I will attempt to answer these questions and define other peculiar characteristics of the system, as I observe the relationship of the liquor store to the students and the students to each other within this small community.