A 200 percent increase in the number of students hospitalized for alcohol consumption does two things: makes me feel sorry for the ER nurses at Palmetto Baptist and scares the ever-loving hell out of me. If freshmen are out there hurting themselves in mass quantities, and we’re all watching it happen, then we are all screwing up in a major way.
I remember taking AlcoholEdu before coming to school. I remember it being a module with simple questions — something designed to be passed. As for the content of the course? Beer, wine and liquor have different alcohol volumes. That, and the fact that the mitochondria is the power house of the cell, and that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, was the knowledge I came into college with.
The first time I got drunk, I was lucky. It was on Moscato or rum and Cokes, or something equally sad and available. I sat in my best friend’s apartment with a ton of people I still love and trust to this day. I think we played board games. The luckiest part was when an older girl took both my hands and told me things that may not be scientifically accurate, but they stuck.
1. If you close your eyes and you feel like you're spinning, stop drinking and switch to water.
2. Drink a big glass of water and eat some carbs before bed.
3. Once you break the seal, be prepared to pee constantly.
The best AlcoholEdu you will ever have will come from your friends. So we, as upperclassmen, need to GIVE that education and teach those lessons. The best friends I have will take my drink away and make me finish a whole glass of water before they give it back, and I will do the same for them. We need to do that for these people who clearly have a warped perception of what it means to enjoy alcohol.
We can sanction and point fingers and “re-educate” all we want. Unfortunately, that all operates under the assumption that college students are going to stop drinking and stop finding ways to drink. They aren’t. Also, there is only so much that statistics and facts and figures can do. At the end of the night, it becomes our responsibility to mentor, and to care for these people who are hurting themselves. We need to talk to them, because we have been through what they are going through.
Bottom line: How are we going to blame it on the alcohol and not ourselves? Because alcohol is going to keep doing its thing, but we have the choice to keep letting kids get hurt or grow some responsible new Carolinians.
