<p>It’s true that students are responsible for their own choices. However, the culture in which one lives has a huge impact on behavior and choices. Colleges can choose to accept that culture or they can work to change it.</p>
<p>And it doesn’t do any good to say “if the drinking weren’t happening there, it would be happening somewhere else” and throw up our collective hands. I don’t have a foolproof answer, but I can tell you this: if you don’t try anything at all, you definitely won’t succeed in improving matters.</p>
<p>“For me the question is why is a frat party consisting of a BBQ with students having a burger and a couple of beers not sufficient? Why all this excess to the point of alcohol poisoning?”</p>
<p>Don’t you think a lot of it is “the cat’s away, the mice will play”? (Freshmen who are now released from being under their parents’ watchful eyes)</p>
<p>Beats me, as I’m pretty much a non-drinker. Hate beer, maybe have a few glasses of wine over the course of a year, never really enjoyed fraternity parties / drinking, got drunk a handful of times before I realized how stupid it was (and how crappy a hangover feels) and I was done. </p>
<p>" fraternities really are service organizations, they need to look at how they market themselves – the “big parties with alcohol” reputation appears to be the dominant image that people have of them. "</p>
<p>I don’t think fraternities / sororities WANT to be known as service organizations. Let’s get real - they’re social organizations, first and foremost - that’s their mission. They may do philanthropy projects – many of which are worthy – as part of what binds them together, but let’s not kid ourselves – they do those things because they serve as anchoring activities that can bring their membership together and it gets some nice PR, not because they’re REALLY formed out of 100 guys or 100 girls who were brought together by a shared desire to cure heart disease or raise money for cancer.</p>
<p>It’s kind of like the dance marathon at my alma mater - it’s a huge event, brings the campus together, and it raises seven figures for worthwhile causes and that’s terrific - but the core reason people do it is because it’s fun to do.</p>
<p>“According to this source/study, college student deaths are actually uncommon, and the number of alcohol-related deaths is 60-76% lower than that of the same-aged general population.”</p>
<p>Perhaps, but it is irrelevant. That does not mean that what is happening at certain fraternities is okay. </p>
<p>Unless someone gets strapped to a chair and has alcohol poured down their throat the only person to blame is the one that drank the alcohol themselves. They try to blame everybody else. It doesnt matter who made it, who bought it, or where the party was. My best friend ODed on heroin and died and that is the only person whos fault it was.</p>
<p>Okay, so what to you is “relevant?” If the information posted here is reliable, we have learned from this thread that there have been zero hazing deaths due to alcohol poisoning in 2013 and through July, 2014; and we have learned that among 11million (?) college students there have been two deaths due to alcohol poisoning this year, one of whom was in a fraternity. We also learned that the rate of alcohol-related deaths among college students is small, and significantly lower than the same-aged general population. </p>
<p>Perhaps you can frame your concerns about “what is happening” specifically? Then we can address those. </p>
<p>@kcollegekid1. I’m sorry about your friend. That’s painful.</p>
<p>I’m pretty concerned when I read about riots at WVU and alcohol overdoses. I don’t think someone has to die in order for us to be concerned by alcohol overdoses, and there are a lot of these, unfortunately. Some end in death. But, clearly WVU is concerned as well and has taken appropriate action. We can ask no more.</p>
<p>I’m pretty concerned about that kind of vitriol and just plain disgusting behavior and language we saw at GTech, but clearly GTech was concerned as well and has taken appropriate action.</p>
<p>I am definitely concerned with the rape issue associated with fraternities and I wish we could do more besides tell our daughters to stay away and teach our sons to treat women as people and not objects. </p>
<p>All that said, I think a lot of the reason we are hearing more about these things is because more is being done about these things, kind of like when depression first became something people talked about, you’d have thought it was on the rise if you didn’t know it was simply being revealed. We’ve seen this with a lot of social ills, for lack of a better cliche. It always looks way worse when the problem is first being addressed because up til then nobody acknowledged it to be the problem it was.</p>
<p>I understand several fraternities have done away with pledging to avoid this, including SAE. I don’t see this as a first step. I see this as being a ways down the path to wanting and implementing an actual solution.</p>
<p>This so reminds me of the pseudo-science many years ago about how cigarette smoke really hadn’t been proven to be bad for you. And currently, the resistance from those who love football to deal with the facts about concussions in that sport and what effects they can have down the road. </p>
<p>Upton Sinclair said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” You can paraphrase that quote to fit this also. </p>
<p>I do think the Universities are starting to address the issue, to some extent.</p>
<p>The problem seems to be at a lot of different levels and probably needs more than just a one path attack. While I see there is a culture in some fraternities that is really awful. One of the worst cases of rape culture occured at Williams at a time and place where there were no fraternities at all. Williams had an interest in the issue and tried to address it, to some extent, at the forefront. But, still, it’s unquestionable that even at Greek free NESCAC schools we find alcohol and rape problems.</p>
<p>Death by alcohol poisoning is not the only possible bad consequence of drinking. Of the college students who die because of alcohol, the majority die in car crashes. Some die in falls. Some die of exposure-- we haven’t had those deaths yet for fall of 2014, because in most places it hasn’t gotten cold enough. Some die in drunken fights. Some deliberately take their lives while drunk.</p>
<p>And then of course there are the non-fatal assaults, sexual and otherwise. And the alcohol-fueled vandalism.</p>
<p>Dismissing alcohol as a problem because only two students (that we know of) have drunk themselves to death this semester is ignoring most of the problem and focusing on one tiny bit.</p>
<p>I’m not dismissing alcohol as a problem. This thread is about “another fraternity party death.” When you look at actual deaths involving fraternity members, you get a different picture than most seem to be expecting: I.e., there are very few deaths in general, and of fraternity deaths, those involving members dying of alcohol poisoning are rare, and due to hazing, almost nil when viewed in context of the 11 million college student population, and as against that age group in general.</p>
<p>If there is a problem, we should solve it. First, the problem needs to be specifically identified and dealt with realistically and not in an hysterical way. </p>
<p>Bay, do you think that it is rare that pledges have to take place in a drinking ritual as part of pledging? Does it matter only if the kid dies?</p>
<p>I, for one, don’t like the whole concept of hazing, however supposedly harmless. The point of it is to break someone down so they can build them up as a more loyal group member. It’s also so that the group members bond more under the duress of the hazing. I dislike the whole groupthink aspect of this, and I think it is antithetical to the whole point of university education. Secondly, with regard to the second point of the point of hazing to provide a crisis that will spur bonding among pledges, shouldn’t people find something to do in which there are obstacles to achieve something real and bond through that experience as opposed to suffering through some artificial bonding/hazing exercise? </p>
<p>Mostly lurking and occasionally posting. I will say that while fraternities and sororities are easy targets because they are often focal points of alcohol abuse and resulting stupid and criminal behaviors on the part of college students (from falling off roofs to rape…), I think that underlying problem is the irresponsible use of alcohol and the unhealthy emphasis our society places on it. It’s become like a god to which college students bow; seemingly every social gathering not only involves it but has it as a centerpiece of the gathering. Our discussion with DS over the summer before he left for college when we first discovered he’d been drinking occasionally with friends and had gotten drunk enough to get sick was telling… When we said something about drinking to get drunk being an unhealthy attitude toward alcohol, he seemed genuinely puzzled by that – “They why drink?” was his response. I think this is pretty typical of college students. They see the point of drinking as getting drunk … despite the unit in 9th grade Health Class that has them parrot back the warning signs of alcohol abuse, including, “Drinking to get drunk,” they either don’t get it or don’t believe it. Personally, I think HS health class should be somehow required twice … once in 9th grade to try to educate the kids who get themselves involved in sex/drugs/drinking early, and then once in like 11th or 12th grade, when it is more relevant to the rest of the kids. Not sure how to make it happen, but I know that my kid had alcohol education every year through 9th grade health class, but none of it registered as relevant to him, so it was in one ear and out the other and did him no good when it <em>became</em> relevant late in 11th grade. It was like he’d never had any alcohol education at all. On the other hand, he did have to take an online alcohol.edu class the summer before going to college, and we spent time as a family discussing the subject of alcohol use in college, our view of it, strategies for dealing with it, etc., but that didn’t prevent him from making an idiotic choice and still overindulging within the first month of being at school. So maybe it’s just a lost cause and even under the best of circumstances there is a certain percentage of them who are going to be idiots and make unwise choices because they have no sense of self preservation because they are operating with their frontal lobes tied behind their backs, and as a result there are going to be some wonderful, beautiful kids lost to what should be a preventable tragedy.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting we throw up our collective hands and give up. I think working to change the culture, fostering a sense of responsibility for each other, etc., providing better oversight of alcohol-related activities, enforcing existing laws, etc., are all good and necessary steps, and since greek organizations are often a focal point for this sort of activity, they should feel a responsibility to take the lead in making these sorts of changes. But banning frats will not solve the problem. Banning alcohol will not solve the problem. And even when universities do the best they can to both educate and enforce, I don’t think the problem will be totally eliminated. </p>