>> Even ignoring the party culture, students will come to class sick out of fear. I've felt bad doing this in the past but the unwritten expectation for classes with attendance is "show up unless you literally can't walk". If you actually reach out to the prof, they'll tell you to stay home but most students will just assume the worst and try to show up.

You touch on two good points. I've been both the student and the prof. When a kid comes to class sweating, barely awake and obviously unwell, too many profs assume that they are simply hung over from the night before. I think that is root of show-up-if-you-can-walk. But my reality as a student was totally different (UBC late 90s->early 00s). Most kids didn't party. Most didn't drink more than once a month. There was a core of frat kids who lived like animal house, but the vast majority of us were too busy. We had jobs. We had to study. We had to commute in to school each day. We spent the weekends skiing or rock climbing, not passing out on the floor.

I had a fulltime job. The one time I fell asleep in class my prof asked me what was wrong. I said I was "up late last night". He assumed I meant that was out partying. The reality was that something broke at work. I had to work into the small hours. My prof had not even considered that I had a real job (not a part-time waiter) totally outside of school. We need to get past such dated assumptions about "students".