The University of Massachusetts is obviously notorious for its reputation as a party school, and many treat it as such. Simply mentioning that you’re a student at this school can come with certain disadvantages. Just being a college student or a young adult can have disadvantages as well. But there is one assumption that is largely incorporated into student life at UMass, which frankly gets on my nerves. This assumption I am referring to is one involving the consumption of alcohol.

To set the record straight, I don’t drink, I’m straight-edge and I’ll never touch the stuff. If others want to, that’s their own choice – to each their own. When it comes down to it though, I don’t appreciate when people assume that I drink. It’s a label I don’t want.

I don’t want people to assume I drink because many people think of the extremes involved with alcohol consumption, such as drunk-driving or violence.

And this isn’t only college culture, but even worldly culture. Many people have it programmed in their heads that almost everyone drinks, but this is a dangerous and ignorant idea. It seems to me that everything has to relate back to alcohol, like it’s something that everyone can relate to.

Doctors don’t ask me whether or not I drink, but rather how much I drink. When people heard that I was coming to UMass, they told me that I was going to start drinking and partying no matter how much willpower I had. After a trip to Cape Cod over the summer, people asked me how much I drank with my friends and how much partying we did in the house we had to ourselves. For the record, we didn’t touch any alcohol. Around my 20th birthday, people were commenting on how I only had to wait a year until I could legally get my “drink on.” It became very old very fast.

Is it really so difficult to grasp the concept that some people in this world don’t drink under any circumstances? I’m not even going into the entire effects of consumption, but just the idea of the act of drinking. My frustration with this largely untrue assumption isn’t applying to those who simply ask if I want a drink, but to those who assume I do on a frequent basis.

There are those who are honestly surprised that I don’t drink and several people have checked on me to make sure I haven’t started.

But who can really blame people? I’m a 20-year-old white college student. I suppose to some that means I’m in a fraternity and I drink a full pack of Natty Light every day of the week, and I just have to go clubbing. Bold claim, I know, but I have encountered many who actually think of me and most others like this.

The media doesn’t help either. Commercials for alcohol are always showing people having the best time of their life with Bud Light, and if these people really have fun like this, great, but people need to get it through their heads that this isn’t the lifestyle of every person in the world.

Shows that portray disgusting people who can’t do anything without alcohol in their system (I’m looking at you Jersey Shore) are essentially brainwashing naïve people who don’t know any better to be able to distinguish that a lifestyle of boozing isn’t hip. You’re not going to see a TV show about a bunch of people in a house who play board games or watch movies together completely sober.

If you want to drink with your friends, cool. If you want to party once in a while, that’s not bad. But if you want to get completely smashed every day, show up to classes drunk and talk about how drunk you are or will be all day, please grow up.

I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. I just don’t like the label associated with college students and drinking.

What we really need are people who just understand. The people who ask if I want a beer, and then don’t pry into why I don’t drink with such disbelief and horror are few and far between. It should not be revolutionary, and yet a large part of today’s culture consists of people who do not have anything in life going for them besides their liver capacity. This makes it difficult for those trying to transcend at label.

When it all comes down to it, I just want people to stop assuming. Come on, I know this is America and I’m in college, but you know what they say about people who assume.

Tim Jones is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].