Another senseless death...

<p>of an 18 y/o freshman from alcohol poisoning at University of Delaware. He was found at an off campus frat house. My heart aches for these parents. As the mother of a current 18 y/o freshmen son this is my worst nightmare. My thoughts & prayers go out to this family and all those who have lost their dear children in this senseless way.</p>

<p>Here's a link to what is known so far:
Alcohol</a> overdose suspected in UD death | delawareonline | The News Journal</p>

<p>Off-campus house rented by Sigma Alpha Mu. (Brett Griffin, 18, was a pledge.)</p>

<p>My heart breaks for that poor boy's family. May they find comfort.</p>

<p>"Studies in the 1990s found that almost two-thirds of UD students were binge drinkers, which is defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row."</p>

<p>I've seen a lot of underage drinking. I think most of it is harmless (though not to GPAs) but a few will have severe problems. It is a hard thing to think about happening to your own kids.</p>

<p>Of college heavy drinkers (multiple binges in a two-week period, or near daily drinking), roughly 60% will become alcoholics (if they aren't already) or will experience serious alcohol problems in their adult lives.</p>

<p>Several colleges and universities are now reporting very high rates of alcohol-related blackouts among students. Blackouts can lead to long-term cognitive impairments.</p>

<p>Yet another -</p>

<p>UR</a> student found dead in cemetery identified | democratandchronicle.com | Democrat and Chronicle</p>

<p>Students need to watch out for each other. I think that parents with kids with mental health issues need to keep a closer eye on their kids at college. The additional levels of academic and social stress and the timing of when certain mental illnesses hit can cause tragic results.</p>

<p>The news from UD hit a little bit closer because my daughter is an active participant in Greek life at that university and because the student that passed away came from a township not more than 20 minutes away from where we live. There is no other connection but I have been carrying a heavy heart thinking of his parents ever since our daughter called on Saturday to tell us what had happened (she was not in the party).</p>

<p>From what I hear and seen in the news the spotlight is shinning brightly on Greek Life at UDel and probably in every campus. As a parent of an active Greek student I welcome the scrutiny that will ensue even if don't agree with the gratuitous shots that are regularly taken at fraternities and sororities in this and other forums.</p>

<p>I certainly hope the closeness of this incident causes my daughter and her sorority sisters to rethink their approach to partying and that it will further induce discussion at all levels of Greek life and campus life in general.</p>

<p>I also had a chance to reflect on this and the question that keeps popping up in my mind is: when are we going to start seriously teaching our children how to drink? For many years we have had drivers education and sex education and while those problems have not gone away we have certainly made progress. The same cannot be said about underage drinking and binge drinking.</p>

<p>I know I am about to get blasted our of this thread by other very passionate and articulate posters but deep in my hart believe the current drinking age laws is part of the problem.</p>

<p>We have all seen the arguments on both sides and I surely hope this thread does not become yet another bitter debate. The only point I want to make is that from a purely educational point of view the current laws do not allow anybody to address the problem comprehensively.</p>

<p>At the college level I have spoken with high ranking officials at UDel and I can see how their hands are tied. They can certainly do more than they are doing now but when it is all said and done they only standard that is acceptable is zero-tolerance. At the end of the day a 18 year old that shows up on campus, with or without drinking experience, will learn how to drink, or not to drink, from other students. We can see how that effective that is. It makes as much sense as it would have to have the 18 year old son of one of my neighbors teach my 16 year old how to drive.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, there is not much more we can do at home before they leave for college. I would have much rather have my son get drunk for the first time at my neighborhood Super Bowl party than on the other side of the country where he went to school. For one thing, aside from consequences at home, he would have had to consider what it means to be drunk in front of a community that does not consider getting drunk acceptable let alone expected.</p>

<p>I am inclined to agree with you regarding the drinking age, Artiesdad. I was 'legal' at 18 and believe that should be the legal drinking age today. I keep getting back to the idea that kids can go to Iraq and get their heads blown off, but can't legally buy a beer. In addition, seems to me the independence of college life is asking for trouble if they can't be legal. Does anybody know if UDel requires alcohol education? Many schools--most LACs in my experience--are requiring some kind of alcohol awareness class when students first come to campus. </p>

<p>I have a heavy, heavy heart for the family/friends of this young man. Such a shame. There, but for the grace of god, goes any of us who have college kids.</p>

<p>"The same cannot be said about underage drinking and binge drinking."</p>

<p>Both false. There is much less underage drinking and binge drinking than there was 25 years ago. If you are interested in the data, you can check Monitoring the Future on-line.</p>

<p>UDel could go "zero-tolerance" if they chose. It's not my favorite approach, but lots of other schools have done it, starting with the University of Oklahoma, and it has driven down both binge and underage drinking in a major way. At the same time they do this, they can also institute "harm reduction" strategies for students who already drink. The reality is that there are several dozen strategies with proven effectiveness that a school can implement if it chooses. They usually simply don't choose.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The reality is that there are several dozen strategies with proven effectiveness that a school can implement if it chooses. They usually simply don't choose.

[/quote]
Mini, is there a convenient list of schools that are implementing the effective strategies? Or do we all just have to do our homework? I didn't consider it an issue with my older son as he hates even the smell of liquor so much I'm pretty confident he won't try it even when he's old enough. (He's Mr. Picky Eater and pretty much impervious to peer pressure.)</p>

<p>mini,</p>

<p>I don't have the statistics and studies to argue with you. I just go by my life experience and what I have seen in my kids and my kids friends.</p>

<p>I also don't like to argue with somebody that starts a response with a quote followed by "Both False". I will take your last statement at face value and assume that the University of Delaware prefers have the situation they are living today that a normal school day. Have a nice day.</p>

<p>Rutgersmamma: Yes. When my daughter was a freshman it was a simple computer-based test the freshman take early in their first semester.</p>

<p>"Mini, is there a convenient list of schools that are implementing the effective strategies? Or do we all just have to do our homework?"</p>

<p>Sadly, no. There is lots of stuff on this NIAAA website (including some that is out-of-date).</p>

<p>Research</a> about Alcohol and College Drinking Prevention</p>

<p>Here is a very good piece:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/1College_Bulletin-508_361C4E.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/1College_Bulletin-508_361C4E.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here's more data than you'll ever want to read:</p>

<p><a href="http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2007.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2007.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>My favorite researcher in this area is Aaron White at Duke:</p>

<p>Topics</a> in alcohol research</p>

<p>"Of college heavy drinkers (multiple binges in a two-week period, or near daily drinking), roughly 60% will become alcoholics (if they aren't already) or will experience serious alcohol problems in their adult lives."</p>

<p>False and unproven.</p>

<p>True and proven - and I've given you literally dozens of citations. I'm sorry if you've chosen, for whatever reason, not to read them.</p>

<p>(What ISN'T proven is a direct link between college binge drinking and later problems.)</p>

<p>Tragic, and unspeakably sad.
The problem I have with research on social problems is that it is conducted by self-sustaining industries. One of my kids was suspected of being Dyslexic, and was dubbed so by the Orton Society. No particular perceptual problems whatsoever, in fact. I was told that this Orton Society screening site found about 80% of those tested to be dyslexic. According to the APA, most of us have treatable mental or emotional problems. Very happy to provide that treatment. The definitions of "mental or emotional" problems or "alcohol problems" are so elastic as to be meaningless. Practitioners in their fields also tend to have out-sized opinions of their abilities to "fix" the problem. Research on effective treatments (often with compromised relationships between those implementing the treatment and those evaluating the efficacy) tend to show that everything works.<br>
This isn't necessarily sinister. Educators think their should me more education, Psychiatrists that there should be more mental health care, and auto care folks think we should rotate our tires and re-balance them more often. True believers all.</p>

<p>Last month, a girl at a nearby high school died after a drinking party in the woods. She wandered away from the party (she told her friends she was getting a ride, but the person she called said the call was too garbled to understand her) and apparently became disoriented in the woods. She ended up drowning in a swampy/marshy area between the party and the main road. It took police 2 days to find her body. </p>

<p>5 days after the funeral, police in the same town arrested 18 kids drinking at a party at a house. And one week after that, police arrested 13 kids at another drinking party in the woods in the same school district. </p>

<p>I don't know what the answer is. But teenagers think they're indestructible, and they don't understand that good judgement is the first thing affected by alcohol.</p>

<p>"On the other hand, students tend to stop these drinking practices more quickly than nonstudents—perhaps “maturing out” of harmful alcohol use before it becomes a long-term problem (16). Rates of alcohol dependence diagnosis appear lower for college students than for 18- to 24-year-olds in the general population (15). And people in their thirties who did not go to college reported a higher prevalence of heavy drinking than people who did go to college (18)."</p>

<p>NIAAA</a> Publications</p>

<p>I see you tried to move the bar using only "frequent bingers" and daily drinkers.</p>

<p>The sad reality is that many kids don't get to the stage in life where they are alcoholics or have serious substance abuse issues in adulthood. They end up in a dumpster, next to a port-o-potty drowning in their own body fluids, or at the bottom of a river near campus.</p>

<p>Why does every discussion of substance abuse on CC devolve into some sort of statistical one upmanship? A kid is dead; that's a fact. He didn't die from Leukemia or a sniper's bullet in Iraq or cardiac arrest while he was playing football- he died from drinking too much; he was too young to drink legally, and I'm sure his parents assumed that U Del had appropriate measures in place to keep kids who were "tipsy" from dying from abuse.</p>

<p>Why is this so hard to discuss in a rational way without everyone getting defensive???</p>