Recently, I had the privilege of watching the documentary “Haze,” which tells the story of Gordie Bailey who died in 2004 as a freshman at the University of Colorado after consuming excessive amounts of alcohol at the Chi Psi fraternity house. “Haze” seeks to explain the phenomena behind this kind of dangerous binge drinking on college campuses across America. While Bailey’s story may be horrifying, it’s anything but uncommon. And the most tragic part of his story is how easily his death, and the deaths of countless others, could be prevented.
According to the Gordie Foundation, a group founded following Bailey’s death to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol consumption in college, a university student dies of alcohol-related causes every five hours. Seventeen hundred students die every year, either as a direct result of alcohol consumption, or in drunk driving crashes, falls, or other accidents caused by impaired judgment. Alcohol causes six and a half times more student deaths than every other drug combined, yet we often think of binge-drinking as a harmless pastime or even a collegiate tradition. At the University, we’re far too ambitious and talented to allow this kind of mindless, dangerous culture to continue.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines binge drinking as any practice of alcohol consumption that raises the user’s blood alcohol content to above 0.08 — typically five or more drinks in a row for men, four for women. The CDC also reports that rates of binge drinking are highest among 18 to 21 year olds: 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by those under the legal drinking age is in the form of binge drinking. According to the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, 44 percent of students attending four-year institutions in America binge drink on a regular basis, and that 44 percent consume 70 percent of all the alcohol purchased by college students.
Alcohol has been a part of the human experience for millennia. Stone age jugs confirm that fermented alcoholic beverages were being intentionally produced and consumed as early as about 10,000 BC. Today, alcohol is consumed in nearly every culture on Earth for its relaxant effects, as a social lubricant, as part of religious rites or spiritual rituals, for artistic inspiration, as medicine and as an aphrodisiac, among other uses. It is possible to drink lightly and pleasurably, so why do some students insist on drinking to the point of memory blackouts and vomiting on a near-weekly basis?
Excessive alcohol consumption and binge drinking — essentially, the collegiate drinking culture — has been acknowledged, celebrated, even glorified by movies like Old School, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, Eurotrip, and Superbad, to name just a few. In many fraternities and sports teams, mass consumption of alcohol is often seen a rite of passage, an initiation task that will take you from submissive underling status to being seen as an equal among your heavy-drinking peers. Drinking has become a competitive sport: not only literally, with drinking games like flip cup and beer pong, but also figuratively, as students often fight to show dominance by one-upping each other with the amount of alcohol they can consume in a sitting. “Everybody wants to be the one with the best story the next day,” explains one student interviewed in “Haze.”
Few collegians are ignorant of the effects of alcohol on the human body. Physically, alcohol causes damage to the liver, often resulting in conditions like fatty liver and cirrhosis in chronic drinkers. In fact, an accumulation of fat in the liver can be observed after just one night of heavy drinking. Alcohol also constricts brain tissue and depresses the central nervous system, sometimes shutting it down completely by stopping the heart and lungs in cases of extreme intoxication. Mentally, alcohol consumption results in euphoria, as well as slurred speech, lapses in memory, and impaired judgment. Yet, because many collegiate binge drinkers are underage, they are often afraid to call for help if a friend begins to show signs of serious alcohol poisoning. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of the drinking culture often leads students familiar with the effects of alcohol to assume that severely intoxicated individuals can simply “sleep it off.” This fallacy, combined with the dangerous, risk-taking behavior of people under the influence of alcohol, results in the frighteningly high levels of alcohol related deaths among college students.
At the University, we are fortunate to have seen only a few of these deaths, but the reality is that we should not be seeing any. These accidents are easily preventable. It is possible to have fun and drink responsibly in college; it isn’t necessary to be inebriated to the point of vomiting and blackout to have a good time. Alcohol is and will continue to be a major component of the college lifestyle, especially among certain subsets, but it is possible to drink without becoming dangerously drunk. Even so, if you or someone you are with does become intoxicated to the level where they are severely incapacitated, a speedy 911 call could save a life and prevent a tragedy like Bailey’s.
Michelle Lamont is an Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.lamont@cavalierdaily.com.
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