College Catholics

College freedom comes with moral choices and responsibilities

College students sit outside Butler University in Indianapolis to attend “Mass on the Grass.” Catholics at Butler Univeristy have no building to call their own, but Mass is offered most Sundays at 1:30 p.m. at the Johnson Room in Robertson Hall. (Submitted photo)

By Kamilla Benko

“College is one of the most selfish times of your life,” said Danny Shine, a junior in college. “You wake up when you want to. You go to parties when you want to. You go to class when you want to.”

At college, freshmen will probably experience more freedom than ever before. College students have full rein over their schedules, who they want to hang out with and what they want to do. And at college, there is plenty to do.

“People say you go to college to have ‘fun’ and you can do whatever you feel like doing,” Shine said. “But it’s kind of a go-to-Vegas kind of thing. Like, ‘What happens in college, stays in college.’ ”

Every college in America has its “party” side.

A survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found that four in five college students drink. Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education discovered that nearly half of all college freshmen who do drink spend more time drinking than they do studying.

“Religion influenced my decisions in the sense that I was very blessed to know who I was,” said Shine, a 2007 graduate of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis.

“I didn’t need those things—alcohol, sex, drugs—to create me,” he said. “I was at college to learn more about myself, not to create myself.”

Shine, who finished his freshman and sophomore years at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., offered his own explanation for the lack of self-control on college campuses.

“So much of the problem with people in our society is that they don’t know their identity,” he said. “People are confused.”

Shine gave an example of the media telling women they deserve respect one moment, and in the next moment telling them to wear a short skirt.

“[The conflicting images are why] people don’t have a sense of identity,” he explained.

After watching some of her friends in sororities this past year, Ali Carson, who will be a sophomore at Purdue this fall, blames it on peer pressure.

“I could see where you could get into a sticky situation—a peer pressure kind of thing—where you ask, ‘Well do I do this and keep my standing in the sorority or do I stand up to them and risk people looking at me like I’m weird?’ ” said Carson, a 2008 graduate of Roncalli High School in Indianapolis.

But though there are people who look for a wild time, there are still students who prefer to spend their time elsewhere.

Carson is a member of an agricultural sorority at Purdue. In her sorority, she said there are many people from small towns who are shocked that people even drink.

“It makes it easier being with those people [because] even if they are not necessarily Catholic, they still have the same restrictions [as me] on things they want to do,” Carson said.

“I think that my college experience was a little different from most people this year,” said Kathleen LaMagna, who finished her freshman year studying theater at Indiana University in Bloomington.

LaMagna explained that she kept herself to certain standards that didn’t include late hours or excessive partying.

“It’s not that I think I’m above that,” said LaMagna, a 2008 graduate of Carmel High School in Carmel, Ind. “It [just] wasn’t particularly fun for me to be out all night. I didn’t enjoy [going out] because I would not be doing any of the things [my friends] would be doing.”

LaMagna said she still managed to have fun on the weekends without needing to attend every party.

At times though, LaMagna said she sometimes wished she could be one of those people who could just go with the flow. But she said something always held her back from joining in the college fun.

“It’s just that I know at the end of my life I am going to have to answer to God,” she said. “I don’t want to look back at these times and have regrets about my behavior.” †