"The Ugly American," Part 1

UCSD is known for its lack of social life. While not entirely true, there are notably less parties here than the notorious UC Santa Barbara or our neighbor San Diego State University. In reality, if by social life, parties are implied, we rank low, but if drugs and alcohol are thrown into the equation, our numbers are probably not much lower than everyone else. It has been said here that fun won’t be thrown at you, for you will have to go looking for it yourself. The perceived lack of alcohol and related socializing (or vice versa) is notorious here at UCSD, for all people do here is study, right? In short, I wouldn’t testify to that.

At the general orientation a couple of weeks ago, we were taught something about stereotypes and how to avoid them. The prevailing theme of this discussion was “the ugly American.” While it is probable that the average American could guess the meaning of these three words, I doubt a lot of my college classmates get the full extent of this stereotype, for most of them fall into that stereotype.

When oversees, avoid wearing college shirts, especially those with acronyms such as UCSD and SDSU because that just screams American college student. What it said then was don’t stick out like a sore thumb. Even if you don’t fall into the stereotype in the full sense of it, parts imply the whole. Hear Democrats, think gay rights; hear Republicans think religion—it’s the same concept.

In my opinion, the “ugly American” concept is not based on anything too far from the true lives of many undergraduate college students. It entails binge drinking at parties to feel looser and more socially apt, as well as being loud and obnoxious. Now the drinking part really hit me as odd. I personally don’t drink, and I know that alcohol is off-putting to me, not to mention illegal in non-medical, non-religious circumstances for people of my age in the United States. I would say that I buy into the stereotype that those Europeans drink a lot. I’ve heard stories of four-year-olds drinking in Croatia and lax enforcement of the drinking age in other countries. Granted, I haven’t been to Europe, though I am planning on going early this summer to France (mostly Paris) and Italy.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend of mine who goes to UCSD, and with whom I went to high school, about drinking and drugs. It did not turn out at all in the way that she seemed to have expected, though judging by the lack of feasibility of alternative answers, she must have had other motive that was in the end unfulfilled by my answer.

And I told her, “I honestly don’t see the fun in getting so drunk that you’re throwing up. I like being in my head, and an altered state of mind seems equally undesirable.” She told me that I was being on the offensive to the entire social aspect of her life. I apologized half-heartedly, but said that she had solicited my opinion, of which I had given.

She told me that drinking is the only thing that she does regarding drugs. She revealed to me that another old high school friend of mine was into experimenting with drugs, to which I was surprised. I guess you could say that this is where my naiveté becomes transparent and my ideology had to be shifted to accommodate others.

I always prized myself on having drug-free, alcohol-free (or what I like to call clean) friends. This stemmed from the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. (or Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program on me. Administered in sixth grade, but now defunct, it involved having a police officer come to campus a couple times a week and lead us through the program. Sometimes the police officer would come to campus during lunch and show us how real handcuffs look and feel both on and off our wrists. The program worked on me, I believe, because I was not a rebel in short. I am not more righteous than others for my history, just to say that I am an active product of society rather than the unintentional-though-pervasive product of society, which creates the adolescent/teenage rebel culture.

Because the D.A.R.E. program was presented in a didactic fashion during school hours, rebelling against society included the program through school. When the ineffectiveness of the program was fully shown, it was cancelled, with the money that used to be appropriated to the program re-appropriated to hiring a full-time police officer for each of the three high schools in the school district.

As the high schools in Thousand Oaks were already safe, violent crime didn’t exactly go down. As I would find out later, drugs existed on campus in considerable quantities, and the presence of a police officer did little to decrease drug crime. All that it did was provide more immediate consequences for those caught.

As I would find out later, our Associated Student Government vice president was a pot dealer on campus, and many of the members of the club Students Against Drunk Driving (bouncing off of Mothers Against Drunk Driving) could be seen drinking vodka, Jose Cuervo, and other liquors from Pyrex measuring cups and those infamous red disposable plastic cups on Facebook.

My personal opinion on the matter has changed considerably since I came to UCSD. Before, I took to the D.A.R.E. philosophy that drugs are bad—drugs being any substance besides food that changes or alters bodily function. In my mind, it was an easy enough definition to deal with. Nicotine (tobacco) is bad, as is marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, and opiates (heroin).

I have never smoked first hand in my life, tried a marijuana joint, or dealt with any illicit drug. I know how alcohol tastes and I hate it, which is part of the reason why it has not been an issue to avoid drinking at college parties. On the other hand, many of students that I reside with in my suite do pot, with the frequency, might I add, as often as once every other day. In one seven-day period, O=one suitemate in particular was completely clean but one day.

This provided an overwhelming point of contention for me, because as I had long found solace in being drug free, suddenly I found myself in an environment where I felt as though I were the only level-headed one (or at least one of the very few). When I went from high school to college, I put myself under the impression that I would never have to feel in such a way again.

Up until recently, I was very put off by this experience and in the end I had to fix my mentality. No longer was I stuck in the confines of high school. Even in college, I was surrounded by less-than-savory people, and with no escape, I was forced to cope. I entered this last quarter with my faith in God and the knowledge that they could not change who I am if I don’t want them to.

My mother, the only person that I can really confide these feelings in, told me that I shouldn’t feel so down because of what other people do. She told me that I based by sense of morality in legality and the law, and maybe I shouldn’t so much. I began reevaluating what I believed to be the rule of law in society until I realized that my conception of the law in society fell in the same arena as a great ancient thinker.

Socrates and I were on the same wavelength. Socrates was sentenced to death for three charges that were frivolous at best. In his defense (The Apology) he failed to simply appease his jurors and answer his accusers. He made a scene of it and justified himself with the set of laws that was used to condemn him. When he was found guilty and subsequently sentenced to death, his good friend Crito came to help him escape. He refused his assistance to escape, and said that he must answer to the state that had so nourished him up until that point. Although he may have been unjustly sentenced, he would die as a testament to the legal system, for where would we be without our laws?

So where would we be without our laws? My studies during this quarter have led me to a class on international drug policy—and a revelation. A drug, or more specifically a psychoactive substance, includes the illegal (cocaine, marijuana, and heroin) and the partially legal (alcohol and nicotine), but also caffeine.

Caffeine has a full range of effects, including negative ones, consisting of insomnia, sweating, palpitations, headaches, etc. In addition, studies suggest that caffeine has a higher addiction rate than marijuana, as many a professional would tell you.

As science is showing, marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as initially thought and has lower addition rates that alcohol and nicotine, both partially legal drugs. So why are we still in such an uproar over keeping marijuana illegal? Logic leads one to ask why alcohol and nicotine are legal and a less harmful drug such as marijuana is illegal. That is why countries such as the Netherlands have decriminalized it.

This brings me to my new opinion of drugs and alcohol—moderation. The “ugly American” stereotype also stems from the treatment of marijuana by people in the United States. Similar to college students drinking to the point of unconsciousness, many Americans go to the Netherlands to engage in recreational marijuana, but I am told they over-indulge, treating marijuana as the forbidden fruit of the populace, being what alcohol is to the American under-aged.

However, even if marijuana were made legal, I would not participate recreationally along the same reasoning as why I choose not to smoke tobacco, thought it would be perfectly legal for me to do so. I am not an advocate for lowering the drinking age, but were I of age, I might engage lightly, but never to the point where I find myself bent over a trashcan nor where I might wake up in Mexico. The drinking age is 18 in Hong Kong, and as I will be 19, why not socialize a little?

In short, I am not a rebel to the rebels; I am a traditionalist among the insecure; I am a traditionalist among those who think they are traditionalist; I am a liberal American. Attack me now.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
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