There is a new article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how the networking and social functions at scholarly conferences tend to be solidly anchored around alcohol consumption, and how that is a barrier which keeps people who don't drink from being able to fully participate in these conferences, or at least in those very important functions that these conferences serve.
While maybe it doesn't quite count as a "scholarly" or "academic" conference, the TAMs certainly strove to run along the same lines at least. And as a teetotaler, I found myself largely locked out of the social scene when I attended TAM4. Once all of the mid-day talks and presentations were done, it was time for socializing; and quite frankly, in large part this meant going to a hotel bar - either at the conference hotel or some other hotel on the Strip. Or it meant a group of people going to somebody's hotel room, and of course drinking there. There was the enormously popular "pub crawl" as well, which I couldn't attend because what is the point of a pub crawl if you don't drink anything at them?
Certainly there were alternatives - once I was able to go to a restaurant with a group of attendees, and in another case I was able to explore the Vegas strip with a couple of friends where although drinks were occasionally ordered the alcohol wasn't the focus and so my declining to imbibe wasn't as conspicuous. And as enjoyable as they were, these events by their sparsity served to highlight how much of the socializing I was missing out on the rest of the time.
It might be natural to argue that the solution is to go hang out at the bar or do the pub crawl anyway, and simply not drink because nobody will care. To this my rebuttal is simply that my own experience has proven that this isn't true. When you go to an event or a location that's centered around alcohol and you don't drink anything, people do notice, and they do judge you for it. They can even become annoyed or irritated at you for it; at the very least you're in for some snide comments that taint the experience. I'm honestly not sure what the reason for this is - I sometimes suspect it's because some people who drink feel that people who don't must be judging them, which upsets them. It seems to be the case that when I tell people I don't drink alcohol, they assume it must be for some religious or moral reason, which of course must necessarily mean I have to consider them to be morally bad because they drink - or they assume them drinking around me must be making me uncomfortable, which creates this feedback loop of discomfort that irritates them. For this reason I often feel compelled when telling someone that I don't drink to immediately elaborate that it has nothing to do with morality or any such thing, and that I don't care if other people drink - but I'm not sure it's always convincing. Perhaps it's like telling someone you're asexual - they just don't believe it because they can't conceive of anyone who doesn't think drinking is somehow "wrong", still refusing to drink.
And that's just the issue for someone like me who simply doesn't like alcohol. The article focuses more on "sober" people - those who are recovering from alcohol addiction. For them the problem is much worse, because "just go there and don't order any drinks, and grin and bear it through the awkward questions and snide comments" isn't even a hypothetical option - it's too vital to their recovery to not only avoid being served alcohol, but avoid situations in which everyone around them is drinking it.
Now the TAMs are long gone of course; I'm not even sure there are "skeptical" conferences of any kind going on these days. But conferences of other kinds, including ones that deal with scientific and academic subjects, do go on. Keeping in mind the article's assertion that the point isn't to "ban drinking" at events or somehow change all of society to de-emphasize alcohol consumption as a social linchpin; what are some things that can be done at conferences and other similar events to allow non-drinkers to partake in the important social networking that is at least half the point of these events?
While maybe it doesn't quite count as a "scholarly" or "academic" conference, the TAMs certainly strove to run along the same lines at least. And as a teetotaler, I found myself largely locked out of the social scene when I attended TAM4. Once all of the mid-day talks and presentations were done, it was time for socializing; and quite frankly, in large part this meant going to a hotel bar - either at the conference hotel or some other hotel on the Strip. Or it meant a group of people going to somebody's hotel room, and of course drinking there. There was the enormously popular "pub crawl" as well, which I couldn't attend because what is the point of a pub crawl if you don't drink anything at them?
Certainly there were alternatives - once I was able to go to a restaurant with a group of attendees, and in another case I was able to explore the Vegas strip with a couple of friends where although drinks were occasionally ordered the alcohol wasn't the focus and so my declining to imbibe wasn't as conspicuous. And as enjoyable as they were, these events by their sparsity served to highlight how much of the socializing I was missing out on the rest of the time.
It might be natural to argue that the solution is to go hang out at the bar or do the pub crawl anyway, and simply not drink because nobody will care. To this my rebuttal is simply that my own experience has proven that this isn't true. When you go to an event or a location that's centered around alcohol and you don't drink anything, people do notice, and they do judge you for it. They can even become annoyed or irritated at you for it; at the very least you're in for some snide comments that taint the experience. I'm honestly not sure what the reason for this is - I sometimes suspect it's because some people who drink feel that people who don't must be judging them, which upsets them. It seems to be the case that when I tell people I don't drink alcohol, they assume it must be for some religious or moral reason, which of course must necessarily mean I have to consider them to be morally bad because they drink - or they assume them drinking around me must be making me uncomfortable, which creates this feedback loop of discomfort that irritates them. For this reason I often feel compelled when telling someone that I don't drink to immediately elaborate that it has nothing to do with morality or any such thing, and that I don't care if other people drink - but I'm not sure it's always convincing. Perhaps it's like telling someone you're asexual - they just don't believe it because they can't conceive of anyone who doesn't think drinking is somehow "wrong", still refusing to drink.
And that's just the issue for someone like me who simply doesn't like alcohol. The article focuses more on "sober" people - those who are recovering from alcohol addiction. For them the problem is much worse, because "just go there and don't order any drinks, and grin and bear it through the awkward questions and snide comments" isn't even a hypothetical option - it's too vital to their recovery to not only avoid being served alcohol, but avoid situations in which everyone around them is drinking it.
Now the TAMs are long gone of course; I'm not even sure there are "skeptical" conferences of any kind going on these days. But conferences of other kinds, including ones that deal with scientific and academic subjects, do go on. Keeping in mind the article's assertion that the point isn't to "ban drinking" at events or somehow change all of society to de-emphasize alcohol consumption as a social linchpin; what are some things that can be done at conferences and other similar events to allow non-drinkers to partake in the important social networking that is at least half the point of these events?
via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2RDNxVt
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