New Student Week (er, Wildcat Welcome) is, by my personal definition, the convergence of needy underage kids walking around all the time, trying to get to parties and/or lamenting that there are no good parties.
There are no good parties for you because there are too many of you. For each frosh invited to an off-campus abode, another five show up. No one gives the host cash flow, everyone makes a mess and resentment goes both ways when the booze dries up. So why even bother?
This is the the only piece of knowledge that I want you to absorb, right now: It is not Northwestern’s fault that there are no parties. The problem lies, as usual, with money. Upperclassmen don’t leave you out in the cold because we don’t like you. We leave you out in the cold because we don’t want to pay for you. This goes for not just purchasing actual liquor, but paying off the po-po when they come to bust the party.
Don’t let NSW be the litmus test for your entire year. Sure, you have much more time to drink now, but you have much less means to drink. NSW is really only fun for upperclassmen (or is it?).
If you still really need to party it up, there are several approaches to take:
1. Meet upperclassmen to buy you booze.
Since they probably won’t invite you to places yet, get to know them well enough that if they’re on their way to EV1 or Jewel anyway, they won’t mind picking you up some goods while they’re there. The true Northwestern partier creates their own party: in dorm rooms, in the basement of Tech, in parking lots, etc. I don’t think I’m supposed to advocate it, but drinking in your dorm room is better than not drinking at all, right? Besides, your CA is probably just a jealous, boohoo-I’m-not-21-and-I-still-live-on-campus student on a power trip. So you’ll get written up: one or two times won’t kill you. Just keep your drinking quiet.
2. Meet already-drunk upperclassmen who will invite you where they’ll be going.
Smart upperclassmen will ignore groups of frosh on the street. Drunk ones will befriend you, thinking themselves saviors to the under-imbibed and guiding you in the right direction. Their alcoholism is your alcoholism. Embrace it. A good place to start with this phenomenon is the upperclassmen siblings of freshmen you meet. They feel close to the freshmen already and are more likely to give a crap about your untainted livers.
3. Don’t stress the point.
Seriously, you have four years to get shithoused. You don’t need to be the girl who got wheeled out of her dorm on the second day of NSW. (For serious, this happened already this school year. To quote Superbad, “People don’t forget.”) Don’t go to a party one night? Who cares? You’ll make up for it later. The only thing worse than a vomiting girl is the kid who constantly talks about how much they wish they could drink right now.
In short, get over it, guys. It’s going to be a long four years if you spend it wallowing in self-pity when you’re not drunk. And if you must keep trolling for parties, good luck. Enough people drink on this campus that you’ll probably find one eventually. Just make sure it’s not a frat party — you already know how I feel about that.