Students who drink a little liquor and a little beer might stay in “the clear,” but too much beer and too much liquor hospitalizes students who have never been sicker.
Last weekend, 11 students were hospitalized and six were sent to the health center for alcohol-related reasons.
“I wish I could say why this is happening,” said Gary Nelson, director of the heath center. “There’s been a change.”
“Maybe there are transition issues,” he added. “But I don’t know why students are drinking so much this year.”
Many upperclassmen who live in the townhouses and at the beach say that they have noticed an increase in underclassman drinking.
“There’s definitely been a change in the amount of freshmen who drink,” said Fenwick Gardiner ’08. “I just think they’re a lot braver than we were [last year].”
“So many kids go to the townhouses and I know of multiple games of beirut that have happened in the dorms,” he added.
Erin Carroll ’09 said she tries to stay away from situations like that.
“A lot of kids drink too much in the dorms, townhouses and beach,” she said. “I don’t go, because most of them don’t know anyone there. If you don’t know anyone, what’s the point?”
Carroll said she thinks students are drinking too much because they don’t know their limits.
Katie Auriemma ’09 said she sees “out-of-control” drinking in Regis.
“It’s obnoxious,” she said. “Kids came to college this year to get wasted.”
She said she often sees students leave the dorms in search of townhouse parties.
“But they always come back soon after,” she said. “They don’t know anyone.”
But the university’s concerns may outweigh students’.
“People die from alcohol poisoning and aspiration all the time,” said Nelson. “It’s not that hard to fall asleep on your back and throw up.”
“I ran Saint Vincent’s Emergency Room for 20 years and saw it happen many times,” he added.
The health center has been making efforts to educate students about the risks of drinking too much through alcohol classes, FYE classes and the Student Health Advisory Committeee.
“It seems like a lot of students are drinking without thinking of the consequences,” Nelson said. “They can be catastrophic.”
Nelson said that if students are sent to the health center or hospital for alcohol-related reasons by RA’s or Public Safety, they will face judicial action from the office of the dean of students.
“Anyone sent to the hospital for alcohol, by ambulance, was sick enough that they needed to go,” said Director of Public Safety Todd Pelazza. “We would never put an intoxicated student in a car with another student.”
However, if students are brought to the health center by a friend, they will not face judicial action. They will only have to attend educational alcohol classes through the health center.
Nelson said that the university decided to implement this after last year’s incident with a Colorado college student.
The students’ friends let him “sleep it off” and they found him dead the next morning.
“There needs to be a point, before students become out of control, that they back off,” said Nelson.
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