LIFESTYLE

Sex, Drugs, and Eating Clubs

LIFESTYLE

Sex, Drugs, and Eating Clubs

Who are ’24s outside the classroom? The data below chronicles how the University’s youngest class spent their high school years. The Class of 2024 had a few brushes with teenage rebellion, from illicit drug use to fake IDs. Other pastimes were more innocuous: coffee-drinking, Twitter scrolling, and LinkedIn stalking. Though the Class of 2024 has yet to set foot on campus as Princeton students, we asked them to hypothesize about their social lives in college. We found several notable correlations when breaking down the data by income, gender, religiosity, and geography.

Entering Princeton in an age of quarantine and social distancing, 61.5 percent of respondents reported never having had sex. Factors that increased respondents’ likelihood of engaging in sex included identifying as male, hailing from a different country, or identifying as “not very” or “not at all” religious. Respondents who are recruited athletes were approximately twice as likely to have had sex as their non-varsity counterparts. A.B. respondents and LGBTQ+ respondents were slightly more likely to have had sex than their B.S.E. and straight counterparts, respectively.

Slightly fewer than three-quarters of respondents are starting college single, while 20.5 percent reported having a significant other. For around 5 percent, “it’s complicated.”

The Class of 2024 is the third consecutive class to miss out on a complete Frosh Week — the academic year’s inaugural eating club parties — as the Interclub Council’s (ICC) banned first-year students following a spike in alcohol-related incidents in 2018. While the fall of 2020 will certainly see a precipitous decline in such incidents on campus, a slim majority of respondents reported familiarity with inebriants — 51 percent reported having consumed an entire alcoholic drink in a non-religious context.

Among those who had consumed alcohol, a plurality first drank in 10th grade. A.B. respondents had consumed alcohol at a rate 8 percentage points higher than prospective B.S.E. respondents, while athletes reported drinking at a rate 13.6 percentage points higher than their non-varsity peers who submitted the survey.

In terms of illicit drug use, just under one in four respondents reported trying marijuana, a substance that the University — according to Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities — “does not condone.” High school seniors across the U.S. smoke weed at a similar rate. Domestic respondents were more likely to have tried marijuana than their international counterparts, while varsity recruit respondents had partaken at a rate 7 percentage points higher than average.

Six percent of respondents indicated they possessed a fake ID. New Jersey classifies possession of a false government document as a “crime of the fourth degree” — the lowest-grade felony — unless the ID is used solely to illegally purchase alcohol, tobacco, or another age-restricted product, a violation that the state dubs a “disorderly persons offense.” As most countries outside the United States allow 18-year-olds to drink, just three international respondents owned fake IDs.

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For the past 20 years, youth cigarette smoking rates in the U.S. have steadily declined, and surveyed members of the Class of 2024 reflected that trend. Only one student reported regularly smoking cigarettes or using tobacco. While one in four high school students nationwide reported having recently vaped, only 1 percent of survey respondents indicated habitual electronic smoking. Three students had tried hard drugs, while 16 had tried psychedelics.

Although the eating clubs remained closed this year for the first time since World War I, half of the survey respondents anticipate dining on Prospect Avenue during their upperclass years. Survey respondents whose parents or grandparents attended the University were 10 percentage points more likely to anticipate joining one of the 11 clubs. Though first-years are barred from participating in Greek life, 3.5 percent of respondents indicated interest in joining a sorority or fraternity.

Belonging to a generation characterized by increased stress, anxiety, and smartphones, over a quarter of respondents reported having sought out mental health counseling. The median time respondents spent on their phones was four hours per day — 45 minutes more than the average smartphone user. The three most commonly used apps were Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok — at 84.8 percent, 69.5 percent, and 38.3 percent, respectively.

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