“Date rape through drugs is actually quite uncommon. Most people who think they’ve been drugged are actually just underestimating the effects of the alcohol. In this way, date rape drugs are a lot like stranger danger: the real danger is the people you know and don’t suspect. Drinking from your own cup is certainly good advice, but it pales in comparison with simply drinking responsibly.”
Very hard to get actual data on this, since roofies pass out of the system so fast and are therefore quite hard to detect. But it is the case that many/most stories of claimed roofies also include the fact that the victim was drinking a lot. The effects of heavy alcohol and roofies are quite similar – loss of memory, consciousness and inhibition. Especially when the female gets a sudden BAC spike from consuming a lot of high proof alcohol in a short period of time (i.e. pre-gaming shots).
My guess (just a guess – no data) is that drinking too much alcohol from your own cup is a much bigger risk factor than roofies.
She would have got back into her dorm “Sanborn Hall” with her one-card, right? Those are specific to the person and the college could see who buzzed in to her building at that time. How many residents are first generation students? Quiet, studious, without a lot of friends. I don’t think she will be hard to identify–she gave a lot of info, actually.
I hope she comes forward and gets those guys.
As far as it being written “like a story,” I don’t think that’s unusual for someone this age. Not unusual at all.
I was also wondering about this party which if I understand correctly involved a large group of underage students drinking alcohol outdoors. Aside from the fact that most of them are underage, open containers in public are considered OK by the campus police at the Claremont colleges?
There are few colleges in the country that police alcohol use. They find that it drives drinking underground, and they end up with students unwilling to report alcohol poisoning. The college president told me this at a college once (not 5Cs) – but then I realized that he is right, and this is how most colleges are handling it.
Or even worse than underground, off campus. One of my kids goes to a college that has a well known Catholic college down the road with much stricter drinking rules. The students from this college often travel to my child’s college on the weekend for parties and concerts and they often aren’t arriving by public transportation.
Freshwomen may be particularly vulnerable in that they are less likely to know their limits, and some party hosts or sexual predators may try to serve them mixed drinks with amounts of alcohol that are hard to determine by the party goer. So it may be easier for freshwomen to get very drunk and vulnerable just by being deceived into drinking more alcohol than intended or expected, without the use of other “date rape drugs”. In this type of case, alcohol is the “date rape drug”.
This reads like complete fiction to me. Besides the fact that the first paragraph makes no sense. “Tom” talks to her as she wakes up and hands the bong back to “Bob”, all while “Bob” chokes on smoke from the comment? Where did he get the smoke? The previous bong rip? Sounds to me like she got her characters confused and can’t edit properly.
Several years ago, a girl my children knew from their high school had to be taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning her first weekend at college. She was super-smart, super-nice, an athlete. All the adults who heard about it were saying things about knowing her limits and vulnerability . . . When my daughter, who moved in more or less adjacent social circles, heard about it, her comment was “It’s a miracle that never happened any weekend last spring.”
“In this type of case, alcohol is the “date rape drug”.”
Exactly. I worked my way through college tending bar. I have no idea if any of my female customers were ever roofied. But females being plied with alcohol was a constant daily occurrence.
I’ve never been roofied. But as a 200+ pound male, I’ve definitely had the experience a few times of the alcohol hitting me unexpectedly hard and fast when I have not kept track of my consumption. I suspect that most 125 pound college females reporting that they’ve been drugged (but who were also drinking at the time) were just drunk.
It is far more likely that a young freshman woman with no experience drinking alcohol is going to drink too much and something will happen than get roofied. They simply don’t know their alcohol tolerances or worse they might some kind of inkling but make bad decisions while drinking. They learn quick but it can be a dangerous learning curve. The writer of this article hopefully will be happier at her new college. She sounds socially isolated and I do think there is much drama in what she writes…that is also a sign she could use someone to talk to about her feelings.
@Mastadon I should clarify: It seems at the graduate level, female students report being sexually harrassed rather more than attacked, compared to what undergrad female students report (“report” does not mean reporting to any authority, btw). Yes, it seems the undergrad population of women is especially targeted for attack.
@PragmaticMom Yes, colleges in general are focused on consent education and Title IX training for students, staff, and faculty. YMMV depending on the school and the child.
Or perhaps that undergraduate students, particularly freshwomen, are more naive about both alcohol and sexual assault and tend to unknowingly put themselves into vulnerable situations, while graduate students are less prone to the high risk drinking due to more maturity, knowing the risks, knowing their limits, “been there done that”, etc…
Exactly. They have a different social lifestyle and experience. They were undergrads once too, though. Data on SA that includes both grad and undergrad students can distort the picture for a university or for comparisons between schools, say a residental undergrad college and a university with lots of grad students.
If the predators are in graduate school, they may still seek victims among undergraduate students, rather than among other graduate students are who probably wiser about such things and less prone to being naive with alcohol.