Pass It On — Keg Party At Midnight On The Great Lawn

In case you assumed New York kids were precocious specimens straight out of a Salinger short story or some Wes Anderson feature, rest assured that they’re just as lame as their culturally deprived suburban counterparts:

High school students in New York City have some of the world’s greatest cultural attractions in their back yard. But they often spend their weekend nights acting like stereotypical students at a college surrounded by cornfields, tossing back drink after drink in what those who follow the situation say is a disturbing and dangerous epidemic of binge drinking.

A 2005 city survey found 28% of white students in the city’s public high schools had, within the month before the survey was taken, consumed the four or five drinks in one session necessary to qualify as a “binge.” White students have been shown to binge drink at much higher rates than their nonwhite counterparts. While no comparable statistics exist for the city’s private schools, interviews with students suggest such behavior is frequent.

. . .

A 16-year-old who lives on the Upper East Side, Hilary Shar, said her friends from the suburbs are incredulous when she complains of having nothing to do on weekends. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky you live in the city,'” Miss Shar, an 11th-grader at the Dwight School on the Upper West Side, said. “I say, ‘No, it’s really not that different.’ The movie theaters may be bigger, and there are more restaurants to choose from, but the activities are pretty much the same.”

Those activities often include attending alcohol-laden parties at their classmates’ homes.