I was talking to my D1, who works in consulting for higher education. She also thought this could have happened at most colleges (including the LAC she attended, not Wesleyan). 
I apparently went to numerous parties while at grad school at Columbia where people were snorting cocaine in the backrooms. I was totally oblivious. If your kid steered clear of drugs in high school they are likely to steer clear in college. (Though there are no guarantees.)
Update: I am very local ( 25 minutes) to Wesleyan and just heard on our local news that the two still hospitalized are clinging to life. Apparently authorities are trying to find the source of the drug. If they can get their hands on it, doctors hope to be able to figure out what is in it , and know how to treat the students.
I too visited Wesleyan recently with my D. It reminded me a lot of our visit to Brown–a school about which I had the same impressions. It certainly seems like a great place for artsy students and students who enjoy community service, but it definitely had a different vibe than most other schools we’ve visited–and with three kids that was quite a few colleges.
Dumb students. Book smart but no common sense. Unfortunately prevalent among young adults and teens.
A few years ago, at a local high school a bunch of kids were rushed to the hospital when they did not wake up after first period class. Some one was selling logs of Xanax before school, and the idiots partook, and took too much. Made front page of our local newspaper. The school was closed and the HVAC systems and vents examined since the first fear was there was some gas or other chemical leakage. The whole bunch of them had to do drug rehab for the rest of term.
My guess is these Wesleyan kids got a bad batch of drugs or a more potent than usual batch. A former classmate’s daughter died at a college party, (not at Wesleyan) a few years ago. Honor student, bright, lovely young lady, who just took too much of something or it was tainted, or who knows? Her fellow partyers did not notice she was dead till well into the next day. Thought she was asleep. Tragic. A heartbreak.
I don’t think isolated incidents should affect college decision-making. Indeed this could have happened anywhere, and has happened at plenty of other places. There was a cocaine bust at my son’s Ivy, and a suicide and rape at my daughter’s elite school, and yet I would recommend both of those insitutions to prospective students.
While it may happen almost on any campus, it will be interesting to measure the reaction at Wesleyan. Any repercussion for the offenders?
Maybe Harvest Moon is confusing Becca and Julianna?
http://wesleying.org/2013/04/09/ten-things-we-learned-about-wesleyan-from-reading-the-gatekeepers-in-high-school/
I agree with @mathmom. Kids that steered away from drug and alcohol use in hs school tend to do the same in college, if that was a choice in hs and not forced upon them by strict, overbearing parents. There are drugs and alcohol at most colleges and except for the more conservative ones, most of them do not go out of their way to check students rooms, etc.
I wouldn’t base a college decision on this solely, just like I wouldn’t based upon a suicide, sexual assault, dangerous neighborhood, etc. I agree that the school’s response is what is most important. Wesleyan was my D’s second choice. It is a great school.
The prez of Wes is trying to get students to turn in the drug dealers. http://news.yahoo.com/wesleyan-several-students-hospitalized-drug-symptoms-215804205.html To me, the interesting …and somewhat scary…part of the story is that substituting something else for Molly is so common that nobody is sure the students actually took Molly rather than some other drug.
Hmm, it seems this was not isolated. A quote from the article jonri cites above:
“It was not the first such episode this year at the private school of nearly 3,000 students.
Wesleyan health officials said in a campus-wide email on Sept. 16 that students had been hospitalized the previous two weekends after taking Molly.”
"What is going on at Wesleyan? "
Same thing that’s going on at most schools except apparently a bad batch was taken. And it probably wasn’t molly anyway.
I agree @OHMomof2. Something going on at Wesleyan - must have been a bad batch. But if parents think that students are doing drugs and drinking to excess at most colleges and universities, they are sadly misinformed. Now that in no way means that all kids are doing it or that there are not alternatives for kids who choose not to. It just takes a little work. It took my D awhile to find a tribe a folk who did not want to spend Friday night stoned or drunk. She was very lonely for awhile. She has found them now and her weekends, while maybe boring to some, suit her and her group perfectly.
Agree with others that this could happen at any college - probably with the exception of BYU and a couple others.
Intelligent college kids still make very poor decisions sometimes. I wish my kids would abstain from all substances, even alcohol, but I’ve told them I’d much rather have them drink a little or partake in some marijuana which isn’t manufactured. I’ve told them repeatedly I NEVER want them to partake of manufactured drugs. It’s junk often made by imbeciles with no consistency as to what actually goes in it. If your kids are into the electronic dance music (EDM) scene, there’s a very high likelihood they are doing molly/MDMA/ecstasy.
Further proof of the poor decision making abilities of otherwise intelligent young people is how common it is to see cigarette smoking on campus. One would think this generation has been warned repeatedly since they were born about the dangers of smoking, yet it is still very common on college campuses. Boggles my mind.
…or the rock scene, or the jamband scene, or the [fill in the blank] scene. And probably what they think is MDMA/molly/ecstasy actually isn’t.
…though, Dancesafe reports that MDMA is cheap and abundant right now, at least in Europe, so maybe it’s just a very large dose at work. http://dancesafe.org/why-are-ecstasy-pills-so-strong-at-the-moment/
Another current trend that I do not remember being around when I was in school is the use of “vapes.” Does anyone know what the difference between a vape and the old pipes or bongs that were used in our day? My kids have tried to explain it to me, but quite frankly I don’t even think they really know how these things work.
Supposedly vaping is a cleaner and more “efficient” high and the vape is a lot more portable than a bong, easily fitting into a pocket. Saw tons of them being used this summer when I was attending music festivals. Here’s an infographic explaining differences but can’t speak to the accuracy of the info in it: http://www.theweedblog.com/smoking-marijuana-vs-vaporizing-marijuana-infographic/
My H grew up close to Wesleyan and went to parties there with friends. This was about 25 years ago. When I told him this story he wondered if Eclectic Society still existed “because there were a lot of drugs at those parties” back in the day. Sure enough, one of the articles I read about this incident said some of the affected students had been at an Eclectic Society rave (though not all of them). So not a new issue really, just a new drug.
Also the president of the school wants the students to turn in the dealers:
http://news.yahoo.com/wesleyan-several-students-hospitalized-drug-symptoms-215804205.html
"It was not the first such episode this year at the private school of nearly 3,000 students.
Wesleyan health officials said in a campus-wide email on Sept. 16 that students had been hospitalized the previous two weekends after taking Molly. Students were urged to visit the school’s health center if they had questions or concerns.
In his Monday letter to campus, Roth included a telephone number students can call to make a confidential report.
“These drugs can be altered in ways that make them all the more toxic. Take a stand to protect your fellow students,” he wrote.
Some of the students who required medical attention attended a rave at the school’s Eclectic Society social house on campus, Rubenstein said. The show featured disc jockeys from New York who go by the name Swim Team. They did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
“Some of the students were there but not all of them, and there is not necessarily a connection there,” Rubenstein said. “They are really looking all over campus.”"
Tobacco vapes use tobacco liquids (commercially produced as far as I know) instead of burning tobacco leaf, which is why people say it’s better for you. For pot it’s similar. many use hash oil, which is just a concentrated form of pot in a liquid-ish form, instead of tobacco. Vapes don’t burn these liquids, they vaporize them. Vapes have been around for a long time but until recently weren’t so portable.
Rich kids do lots of drugs…
this shouldn’t be surprising.