Where America’s College Kids Stay Up All Night
Neuroscientists describe the adolescent brain—that is, the human brain from ages 10 to 24—as a sort of lawless, hedonistic place: Throughout those particular years of development, “the brain’s region-specific neurocircuitry remains … vulnerable to impulsive sex, food, and sleep habits,” according to researchers. It’s hard to imagine a better place to observe all three of those phenomena simultaneously at work than at any institution open 24 hours near a college campus.
When the national media turns its eye to college campuses, it often focuses on the ways the college experience has evolved in recent years—with regard to, say, free-speech issues, or campus safety, or matters of misconduct and prevention. So it’s easy to overlook the fact that one of college’s most beloved features—a round-the-clock culture of frivolity and togetherness—has barely changed at all. College students, especially those who live on or near the campuses where they attend class, are uniquely suited to the 24-hour–hangout lifestyle, and that fact has sustained a cottage industry of open-all-hours locations, usually food-centric, kept afloat by students’ boundless appetite for friendship and flirting (also, fries). After all, undergrads, being generally around the age range of 18 to 22, are just young enough to consider a 1 a.m. study break with burgers or burritos an appealing, gastronomically nonthreatening possibility, and just old enough to be able to go out into the night to pursue it unsupervised.
Of course, not every college town or campus has a vibrant after-midnight social scene. Students at the University of Hawaii and for a healthy lifestyle, while elsewhere bars and restaurants popular among college students have —in many university towns across America, it lives on. Almost every student I spoke with for this story could name without a moment’s hesitation where was, where everybody at the end of the night. I’ve profiled a sampling of from across the country below, featuring photos from student photographers at each university.
