Alcohol-related deaths a major concern on US campuses.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Amidst a spate of national incidents that have put college binge drinking in the media spotlight again, Dartmouth College said Thursday that it would ban be banning all hard liquor on campus.
As of March 30, when the spring term commences, Dartmouth will prohibit any liquor on campus that is over 15 percent alcohol by volume, which effectively excludes anything with more bite than a bottle of wine.
Reports of sexual assault, fraternity hazing, hospitalization, and even fatalities have surged recently, with severe inebriation often an aggravating factor. In the past week alone, two former Vanderbilt football players were convicted of raping an unconscious woman, while a Stanford swimmer was also accused of perpetrating the heinous crime.
The perils of binge drinking don’t discriminate based on race, and the South Asian community has also had the issue on its mind of late. As previously reported by the American Bazaar, two Indian American students who were studying at separate campuses in California were found deceased over the past two months. Authorities ruled alcohol consumption and foul play involving blunt force trauma factored into the each of the deaths, respectively.
Dartmouth may be battening down the hatches, but according to The New York Times, experts say not to expect a glut of academic institutions, if any, to follow suit. Many campuses, many of which have religious affiliations, have always been entirely dry, but only a handful of colleges and universities that once allowed hard liquor have tried to retroactively change their position on it.
The ban on hard liquor has divided the student body on campus. While some believe it will lead to an increase of furtive binge drinking off campus and subsequent drunk driving, others are in favor of the new rule, such as Chester Brown, president of the Beta Alpha Omega fraternity.
“It’s important to recognize that the alternative here is abolition of the Greek system,” he related to The Times.
Greek life has long had a stigma that goes hand-in-hand with excessive drinking, an association that was severely underscored by the purported rape scandal at the University of Virginia that Rolling Stone reported on late last year. The article featured the story of a young woman who had been brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party and caused nationwide outrage.
Sororities were barred Thursday from attending any fraternity parties at UVA until the end of the weekend. The move implicitly acknowledges the booze-laden, sometimes dangerous culture cultivated at fraternity parties, but hardly indemnifies those who have been assaulted or even died in connection to Greek activity.
A study released by the Center for Disease Control highlights excessive alcohol use as a leading cause of death. Between 2006 and 2010, binge drinking accounted for 88,000 deaths per annum, and accounted for one in ten deaths among working-age adults aged between 20 and 64 years. The CDC also found that about five percent of the fatalities involved individuals under the age of 21.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has its own take on those numbers, attesting 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from unintentional injuries where alcohol is involved, while more than 97,000 students in the same age group are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or rape.