A recent study by the website RoadSnacks found that the top-10 “drunkest cities in Connecticut” were Branford, New London, Plainville, Cromwell, Milford, New Haven, Torrington, Norwich, Manchester and Westport. (Edson Hong/Flickr)
The Storrs-Mansfield area has been named one of the least drunk places in Connecticut.
A recent study by the website RoadSnacks found that the top-10 “drunkest cities in Connecticut” were Branford, New London, Plainville, Cromwell, Milford, New Haven, Torrington, Norwich, Manchester and Westport.
The study conducted by RoadSnacks decided that a city’s drunkenness can be measured “by the number of available places to buy booze, and by how often people are talking about drinking.”
Other criteria included the amount of bars in a given area per capita, the amount of liquor stores per capita, the number of wineries per capita, the amount of tweets relating to drunkenness in a given area and by comparing the divorce rates of different cities.
Tweets were found with the hashtags “#Drunk,” “#Party,” “#Beer,” “#Wine” and “#Cocktails.” The criterion of divorce rate was justified as “drinking is one reason for divorce, and something that divorced people do a lot of.”
The study named the town of Branford as the drunkest in the state, with their liquor store and divorce rate numbers both in the Connecticut top 10.
Both Storrs and Mansfield were named two of the least drunk places according to the study, with Mansfield the least drunk and Storrs the third-least drunk.
“While you might think the larger cities and college towns are ‘more drunk’ than these places, when you measure the percentage of people who have access to alcohol, and who are separated, it makes sense,” the study reads.
UConn’s Crime and Safety Report states that liquor arrests and referrals skyrocketed from 2013-2014 to 2014-2015, with arrests jumping from 14 to 56 and referrals increasing from 483 to 750.
Recent arrests of students who used fake IDs to buy alcohol have induced police to step up their presence with regard to this aspect of campus criminality. Students have had similar experiences with not being carded at various liquor stores on campus. Underage drinking is a fact of life at UConn – from 17-year-old freshmen to 20-year-old seniors.
Marisa Concilio, a fifth-semester allied health major, is perplexed by the findings.
“Considering Storrs-Mansfield is home to the largest university in Connecticut, it’s very surprising to me it would be named one of the least drunk places in Connecituct,” Concilio said.
Sam Spitzschuh, a third-semester accounting major, echoed Concilio’s sentiment.
“I’m quite surprised to hear this,” Spitzschuh said. “I was always under the impression there was quite a lot of drinking going on around here.”
Although not necessarily a bastion of intellectuality, the comments section of the article on RoadSnacks’ website was quite skeptical of the report’s findings.
As commenter David Melilo said: “I have to question any report that has Storrs as a model of sobriety. I think when that happens you have to say…we are doing this wrong!”
The fact that divorce rate was used an indicator of a city’s level of drunkenness was also questioned by readers of the report. Commenter Joe Oberman criticized the findings for implying that “the number of bars and liquor stores determines the divorce rate for the towns.”
Sten Spinella is a senior staff writer for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at sten.spinella@uconn.edu.
