O-Week Alcohol ER Visits Reach Record High

@JHS The UCPD records list only the underage drinking violations that result in a student being taken to the emergency room. This is the exact description “Underage individual became ill after consuming alcoholic beverages / Transported to ER by CFD EMS for evaluation and treatment”

Where fun goes to die or where you go to die having fun?

            I wonder what gets you to the ER? There must be a really low bar to transporting some of these kids to the hospital. The really interesting data would come from the ER IMO. Was the transport medically indicated? What was the treatment, were they admitted, or are they just being shlepped off campus for liability reasons?  (not trivial, don't get me wrong) . 

Dehydration is usually the culprit, which after a saline IV, you feel a whole lot better. Seems to be popular which college kids today.

  Really, that won't get you into the ER  so what is the call for an ambulance based on? Puking? Laying down being drunk? Singing rugby songs? Or actually being unconscious and unrousable?  

Spikes in ER visits due to over-imbibing should be concern-worthy and if such spikes are concentrated in a few dorms there might be something wrong with the culture in those dorms. Small numbers now but worth keeping an eye on. North, South and MaxP house a little over 1/3 of the undergrads and the College is planning to build another dorm in the not-so-distant future. If there is something about the other three newer res halls that encourages negative behavior, that’s worth looking into. FWIW.

Dehydration is very serious and absolutely will get you admittedly to a ER and an IV administered. @Sybylla

@JBStillFlying

Contributing to misinformation doesn’t help anyone. The actual statute in MN is 340A.503 PERSONS UNDER 21; ILLEGAL ACTS…

It is unlawful for any person under the age of 21 years to consume any alcoholic beverages.

and

It is unlawful for a person under the age of 21 years to possess any alcoholic beverage with the intent to consume it at a place other than the household of the person’s parent or guardian.

So quite contrary to your assertion, most people realize correctly that drinking or even possessing alcohol with the intent to drink anywhere other than at your parents residence with their consent is illegal in your state as well as most others. It is also illegal for those providing them the alcohol.

Hold it are you saying that CC has misinformation on it… =))

My concern would not be that a few kids are very occasionally being carted off to ER (unless someone has information to suggest that those kids are in any sort of life-threatening condition, something I highly doubt). Likewise, modest consumption in the dorms at particular times wouldn’t in itself be problematic so long as it is not creating pressure on kids not otherwise interested or becoming some kind of ubiquitous social solvent with all the pitfalls and dangers that that behavior implies - in short, something approximating a caricature of frat house culture. Only kids who actually live in these dorms could tell us whether anything like that is developing. Long ago I remember the occasional fellow in my own house who would get stinko, usually on a Saturday night, make an ass of himself in the dorm and sometimes outside it. It wasn’t very edifying, but it was understandable, if you knew what was troubling him. It was human nature.

@NashvilletoTexas - that’s probably correct - was thinking of consumption in the home and inappropriately broaden that to “private property.” Didn’t mention possession but that’s different from consumption (and more akin to purchase). Mea culpa.

And even if it were perfectly legal, the colleges will have their own rules: In Loco Parentis and all.

@CU123, who is diagnosing dehydration in order to call an ambulance? This is my point, in what state are these kids? Putting up an IV is just as likely SOP for anyone who is on a cart in a real US ER. How many of these kids are assessed in the ER and sent straight home after a quick liter of something? L. Are these kids binge drinking to the point of real danger or is the bar for getting them off campus an issue?

@Sybylla the RA’s or RD’s are likely involved in making a good number of those calls and they are going to be cautious but also prudent. The individual can also decline medical treatment so if they actually went on to the ER they were likely in agreement that treatment was warranted or not in position to decline (ie not coherent). Someone arriving at the ER is triaged and put in line for treatment depending on severity and what else is going on at the time (any IV could have been started by the first responders). Everyone’s going to follow sensible (and standard) protocol for this situation, as both the first responders and the ER are, indeed, “real”.

Totally antidotal but when dropping off my D last week, overheard an orientation assistant talk about how this year there were a lot of party type kids and a lot of drinking going on during O week. She said it really took her aback that there were so many kids that were partiers.

@JBStillFlying – Those dorms house “only” 1/3 of all undergraduates, but all the dorms combined house only a little more than half the undergraduates. Those dorms house around 2/3rds of the first year class, give or take. And if you pay any attention to the CC threads in the spring and early summer, you know that the kids who say “I want to party” have the clear idea that North, South, and Max P are the dorms people like them choose (and the opposite, too).

It has been puzzling me for years, the current epidemic of kids being taken to the ER for “alcohol poisoning.” I think it literally is not possible to drink more than my friends and I did (legally) in college, at least the first couple of years, but the only ER visits I ever knew about were when someone burned his hand badly trying to do flaming shots of 151-proof rum and when a visiting high school senior suddenly got tachycardia (without drinking excessively at all, although I think she had one drink). People passing out, or getting sick, or both, were very, very common occurrences, but no one thought that was worthy of the ER, and no one died because of it, either.

Now, however, ER visits seem like a common event, and every once in a while someone dies.

When I was a grad student at Princeton in the 1980s, I was shocked to see that one of first handouts incoming students received was a list of warning signs of alcohol poisoning. Clearly an issue there/then.

My brother attended an Ivy in the mid-late 80’s (not Princeton) and they ended up calling an ambulence for one or two of his buds. The stories he told revealed that there was a LOT of out-of-control drinking going on at that time. We also knew a woman whose son had died of alcohol poisoning (at another school) around the same time. Can’t recall the specifics but it did have to do with a frat hazing. It totally devastated her.

@JHS at #34 - I did notice some of that desire to be located in those dorms for those reasons. My big worry would be whether any new dorm built will also acquire the “party” atmosphere. What do you suppose is the reason that MaxP, North and South have that reputation? Is it the larger size, or the mass of 1st years, or something else?

It would be interesting to hear from kids (or via their parents) who live in the dorms with that reputation as to what it actually means for student life in them. What kind and how many kids are partiers at the University of Chicago anyhow, even if concentrated in these dorms? Would anyone seriously so inclined select this particular school for that reason? And how does the Chicago version of this species compare with the HYPS version in intensity of dissipation? A slightly more mischievous question: are the party animals at the U of C likely to be kids with disappointed HYPS aspirations now trying to replicate the spirit of the lost paradise?

I think it’s the larger size, and the absence of singles for first-years. For some reason, there’s an association of singles with being antisocial. And there’s definitely a feeling – probably justified – that the more kids there are under one roof, the more likely that someone is going to be having a party at any particular time. Also, what dorms are really left? Those dorms are where the bulk of the first-years are, and therefore they will be where the bulk of the first-year parties are (and the bulk of the first-year everything else as well).

I don’t really know the current undergraduate dorm vibe at all, but Snitchcock in the past had a reputation for uber-nerd snottiness that was more or less the opposite pole of drinking parties. It also used to have by far the highest percentage of upperclass students living there (and enforcing more mature standards). People would get kicked out for inappropriate behavior. So party-hearty types stayed away. BJ has a couple of hundred kids, so it probably has some decent representation of partiers, just not as many as the bigger, newer dorms. And I-House is so anti-social in design and so far away from the other dorms – who knows what goes on there? It could be like the cantina on Tatooine, and no one who wasn’t there would know.