http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-wesleyan-sophomore-overdose-20150222-story.html
Quite a few students were involved…
Students bored & going stir crazy in the snowed-in dorms?
real ignorance about the dangers of these drugs
Too much money, too much free time coped up inside, not enough education about the dangers of hard drugs.
Probably a bad batch. You don’t hear of people dying from molly all the time.
Becca Jannol lives!
Thought she went to Yale.
Cornell, but close enough!
There was a rave concert at one of the co-ed social clubs. Raves are pretty much an open invitation to do ecstasy and typically, the publicity is spread by word of mouth, which is why it caught so many people by surprise.
So scary … and the Courant story says FLOWN to Hartford Hospital. It is not that far. Like less than 20 minutes and so close to the highways. Could road conditions (not good) have played a part in the decision to use air ambulance rather than ground ambulance?
Very sad, but not surprising. Doesn’t Wesleyan have the reputation as an alternative lifestyle / anything goes / very liberal institution? I had assumed, therefore, that drug-use would be more prevalent there than at some other schools. The idea that lack of education is the problem seems ludicrous to me. If Wesleyan students are not well enough informed about the dangers of drug use, what hope is there for students of average or below average intellect? At least in the public schools where I live, kids are taught a unit about drugs in school health class EVERY YEAR.
Wesleyan traditionally has been a place where young people are given a lot of autonomy; the list of projects on and off campus that are the result of student initiatives is pretty impressive: music, theater, film, charity work, environmental initiatives - even farm work - are the stuff of daily postings and announcements in the strictly student-run blog, http://wesleying.org/.
OTOH, despite its reputation as a place where “anything goes”, social spaces - and what goes on inside them - have been a source of a great deal of worry recently. A spate of sexual assault accusations have placed a focus on Wesleyan’s decision to remain one of the last NESCAC colleges to allow fraternities on campus. That decision has been driven, in part, I believe, by the fact that over the years, students have “voted with their feet”, as it were, by not joining them in nearly the numbers they did a generation ago. Because of its downtown residential location, Wesleyan also has an unusual amount of neighborhood housing stock available for student “independent living”. House parties thrown by upperclassmen are a weekend staple, but, they tend to be smaller and more manageable than the typical fraternity: https://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/housing/woodframe/25_fountain_b.htm
Finally, I think it’s easy to underestimate how much drug enforcement is actually going on at Wesleyan. Unannounced fire inspections are widely believed to be excuses to seize contraband items such as wine, alcohol (including unopened bottles), pot and just about anything associated with pot smoking (bowls,bongs, water pipes,) And, anyone caught with actual marijuana is reported to the Middletown Police Department (MPD) as a matter of policy. These are a much stricter policies than I’ve read or heard about at any other selective small college and I think it reasonable to wonder whether the administration’s efforts to go after a little weed smoking has simply driven the same customers to taking more extreme risks?
Wesleyan has a deserved reputation for respect for diverse pathways through life and ideologies. (When I visited a few years ago, there were many posters proclaiming “Arab and Arab-American LGBTQ Month,” and the sidewalks were thick with chalked controversy over rumored proposals to restrict chalking the sidewalks.) But I don’t have the sense that it’s particularly druggy compared to any of its peers. Which is not to say it’s anything like drug-free, just that it’s not particularly drug-focused.
Frankly, ecstasy isn’t much of an alternative lifestyle thing. I suspect per capita consumption at Penn State during its recent annual “Thon” fundraiser was pretty high, and you don’t get much more mainstream than Thon at Penn State.
I was watching the news on this all day yesterday – thinking how awful this must be for their parents… And I assume admissions must be trying to figure out the impact on yield this year – should they accept more students?
DS and I visited last week. We both fell in love with Wesleyan. This is disconcerting.
It would be helpful to see if this was all voluntary drug use and a “bad batch” or if they were given something that was laced with MDMA. Pot laced with MDMA seems popular.
I was listening to the late Robert Stone in a radio interview, and he said their bus driver (as in "the bus) thought it was hilarious to slip people LSD, like in their beer or coffee. Though he was clearly a drug user, he was vehemently against that practice, and basically wanted to kill the guy when it happened to him.
FWIW NYMomof2, there was a lot of drug use at the Ivy I attended, you just learned to stay away from certain parties. Not that alcohol is 100% safe, or even drinking something that you didn’t see poured from the bottle is safe either, but the number of places where there was “light casual drug use” was very very low, either there was little drug use observed at a party or it was full-blown take what you want free drugs.
Voluntary MDMA use is unfortunately very, very common at raves.
Yes, I know there’s drug use just about everywhere, but to visit this idyllic campus one day and hear this awful news just a couple of days later is unsettling. The kids I met were great. I hope that none of them were involved, and I hope the involved kids will recover.
@NYMomof2 -My comment was directed toward rhandco’s question as to whether the students in question more likely took Molly voluntarily of were slipped it. It is disconcerting, and regardless of whether drug use happens at other places this incident may face Wesleyan to take a look at the kind of parties they allow on campus.
My thoughts go out to the students and their families. College students sometimes do stupid things but it’s very sad when those poor decisions turn out so badly.