Risk to College Students

What do these people have in common?

Jason Kirsinas, 21
Jason Reinhardt, 21
Steve Saucedo
Samantha Spady, 19, of Beatrice, Neb
Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., 18, of Dallas
Thomas Ryan Hauser, 23
Blake Adam Hammontree, 19
Bradley Barrett Kemp, 20

Collegiate Alcohol Poisoning Deaths, 2004:

All of these students, last seen drinking heavily, were found dead :

*Jason Kirsinas, 21, May 2004 - California State University-Long Beach student and President's Scholar Jason Kirsinas dies after lapsing into a coma following a night of drinking on his 21st birthday.

*March 2004 - Jason Reinhardt, a former student of Minnesota State University-Moorhead, dies of alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday at the Phi Sigma Kappa house. Reinhardt has 16 drinks between midnight and 1 a.m. at a Moorhead, Minn., bar before going to the fraternity house with friends. His blood-alcohol content was 0.36.

March 2004 - University of California-Berkeley student, Steve Saucedo dies after an off-campus drinking contest with a group of friends.

• Samantha Spady, 19, of Beatrice, Neb., was found Sept. 5, 2004 in a Colorado State University fraternity.

• Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., 18, of Dallas, was found Sept. 17, 2004 at a University of Colorado fraternity house.

• Thomas Ryan Hauser, 23, a junior from Springfield, Va., was found Sept. 19, 2004 in his apartment near Virginia Tech.

• Blake Adam Hammontree, 19, of Medford, Okla., was found Sept. 30, 2004 in a fraternity house at the University of Oklahoma.

• Bradley Barrett Kemp, 20, of McGehee, Ark., was found at home Saturday at the University of Arkansas.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/9798116.htm"> Just saying no could mean difference between life, death

By Ana Veciana- Suarez The Miami Herald

If you're the parent of a college-age child -- or, for that matter, any adult who cares deeply about kids -- the news that a second Colorado student may have died of alcohol poisoning comes as a sharp reminder of America's biggest drug problem.

Sure, we hear a lot about the new boutique pills making the rounds of nightclubs, but binge drinking is far more pervasive and dangerous. It's picking off our youth and harming their future. In fact, more students will die of alcohol-related causes this year -- about 1,400* -- than U.S. soldiers have perished in Iraq. An additional 500,000 will suffer injuries.

Just in the past three weeks, two students have been found dead in fraternity houses after a night of partying. The first student, Samantha Spady, was a sophomore business major at Colorado State University. The cause of death for the second, a freshman at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has not been released, but alcohol is suspected.

Sadly, these incidents aren't all that uncommon. In May, a California State University President's Scholar lapsed into a coma following a night of drinking on his 21st birthday. In March, another 21-year-old died of alcohol poisoning after celebrating his birthday, as did a college student in California during an off-campus drinking contest. In Miami, two college students died in the 2001-2002 school year.

And those are just the deaths that made headlines.

For plenty of parents, paying for tuition may be the least of their worries. The problem of alcohol consumption -- anything from a few beers to the one-after-another shots of tequila -- is like campus kudzu: everywhere and hard to get rid of. There aren't any loans or federal grants to ease the burden.

I swallowed hard when I heard the news of the Colorado students. Indeed, the damage done by fraternity hazing, drinking games and student parties stretches far beyond the narrow perimeters of a college campus and into the homes of the grieving families left behind. How does one ever recover from such a tragedy?

Studies of the crisis abound. The latest, released last month, concluded binge drinking was worse than expected. College students may down as many as 24 alcoholic drinks in a row, according to the report funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (Other research had defined binge drinking as having five or more drinks in a row, and maybe more.)

Imagine: Two dozen! The most quoted study, one conducted by Harvard University School of Public Health, showed that 51 percent of college men and 40 percent of women had engaged in binge drinking within two weeks of the survey. Over half did this frequently. The consequences were dire, from vehicular deaths to serious injuries to unprotected sex to suicide.

I'm stumped at offering solutions. Already, many colleges have instituted measures ranging from zero-tolerance policies to mandatory online classes. Yet, as the everybody-does-it mentality persists, the problem grows.

The campus culture of alcohol consumption is hard to beat, and I suspect it will require more than educational forums. Being drunk will have to lose its glamour. In the end, the courage to resist peer pressure, the strength to say a resounding no, is a personal choice. It is one fostered in a child's early years and nurtured through adolescence. It is one that needs constant care from parents and community support

If the student arrives on campus without the practice of saying no ahead of time, college life certainly won't teach him how.

========
*includes alcohol-related car crashes. Sources of statistics:

Hingson RW, Heeren T, Zakocs RC, Kopstein A, Wechsler H. Magnitude of alcohol-related mortality and morbidity among U.S. college students ages 18-24. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 63(2):136-144, 2002.

Hingson RW, Howland J. Comprehensive community interventions to promote health: Implications for college-age drinking problems. Journal of Studies on Alcohol Supplement 14:226-240, 2002.

============

May 2004 - California State University-Long Beach student and President's Scholar Jason Kirsinas dies after lapsing into a coma following a night of drinking on his 21st birthday.

March 2004 - Jason Reinhardt, a former student of Minnesota State University-Moorhead, dies of alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday at the Phi Sigma Kappa house. Reinhardt has 16 drinks between midnight and 1 a.m. at a Moorhead, Minn., bar before going to the fraternity house with friends. His blood-alcohol content was 0.36.

March 2004 - University of California-Berkeley student, Steve Saucedo dies after an off-campus drinking contest with a group of friends.

December 2003 - South Dakota School of Mines and Technology student Tyler Loeb dies of alcohol poisoning from drinking while driving with friends looking for a Christmas tree in the Black Hills. An autopsy shows Loeb had a blood-alcohol content of 0.55 percent.

December 2003 - Pennsylvania York College sophomore Andrew Stephen Hayes dies of alcohol poisoning after attending a party with some members of the Sigma Delta Chi fraternity. His blood-alcohol level was 0.35.

October 2003 - Louisiana State University sophomore Corey James Domingue dies after drinking a bottle of rum in his off-campus apartment. His blood-alcohol content was .43.

October 2003 - North Dakota University of Mary football player Dusten Gailey dies of alcohol poisoning after consuming alcohol at a house party in Bismarck with friends.

September 2003 - Illinois Bradley University student Robert Schmalz dies after 12 hours of drinking at Phi Kappa Tau fraternity celebration for the end of fall pledge. His blood alcohol level was .33.

June 2003 - Friends find the body of University of Idaho student Nick Socorro Cannon in the off-campus apartment he rents for the summer from the Sigma Chi fraternity.

February, 2002 - University of Maryland-College Park freshman Daniel Reardon is found in a lounge at Phi Sigma Kappa house in cardiac arrest caused by excessive alcohol consumption. He dies after removal from life support.

October 2000 - California State University-Chico freshman Adrian Heideman dies from complications of alcohol poisoning after drinking a bottle of brandy at a Pi Kappa Phi fraternity pledge party.

April 2000 - University of California Davis senior David Thornton dies after downing 21 drinks to celebrate his 21st birthday.

November 1999 - Duke student Raheem Bath drinks too much, passes out and inhales his vomit which leads to a fatal bacterial infection in his lungs.

August 1999 - Texas A&M University student Michael Wagener dies of alcohol poisoning after celebrating his 21st birthday. His blood alcohol level was .48.

November 1998 - Michigan State junior Bradley McCue dies of alcohol poisoning after drinking to celebrate his 21st birthday. McCue drank 24 shots in less than two hours. His blood alcohol level was .44 percent.

September 1997 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore Scott Krueger dies of alcohol poisoning after binge drinking in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house where he pledged. His blood-alcohol level was .41.

August 1997 - Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge Benjamin Wynne, 20, dies of alcohol poisoning at Louisiana State University. His alcohol-blood content was .588, equal to more than two dozen drinks.

February 1997 - Clarkson University freshman Binaya Oja,17, dies of asphyxiation after drinking beer and liquor with other new fraternity pledges until they vomit.

September 1995 - Matthew Garofalo dies after chugging from a bottle of whiskey during a Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity pledge ceremony at the University of Iowa.

October 1990 - Western Illinois University freshman Nicholas Haben dies of alcohol poisoning after being forced to drink "rookie juice" - a concoction of beer, Schnapps, coffee, tuna, eggs, and hot dogs - as part of his initiation into a lacrosse club.

February 1988 - Rutgers University Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity pledge James Callahan dies after being forced to drink "kamikazes," a potent vodka drink.

September 1986 - University of Texas at Austin freshman, Mark Seeberger, dies after drinking up to 20 ounces of rum during a Phi Kappa Psi hazing. He is fo

A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences

The consequences of excessive and underage drinking affect virtually all college campuses, college communities, and college students, whether they choose to drink or not.

*Death: 1,400 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Injury: 500,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Assault: More than 600,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Sexual Abuse: More than 70,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Unsafe Sex: 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex and more than 100,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Academic Problems: About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall (Engs et al., 1996; Presley et al., 1996a, 1996b; Wechsler et al., 2002).

*Health Problems/Suicide Attempts: More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem (Hingson et al., 2002) and between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year due to drinking or drug use (Presley et al., 1998).

*Drunk Driving: 2.1 million students between the ages of 18 and 24 drove under the influence of alcohol last year (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Vandalism: About 11 percent of college student drinkers report that they have damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (Wechsler et al., 2002).

*Property Damage: More than 25 percent of administrators from schools with relatively low drinking levels and over 50 percent from schools with high drinking levels say their campuses have a "moderate" or "major" problem with alcohol-related property damage (Wechsler et al., 1995).

*Police Involvement: About 5 percent of 4-year college students are involved with the police or campus security as a result of their drinking (Wechsler et al., 2002) and an estimated 110,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are arrested for an alcohol-related violation such as public drunkenness or driving under the influence (Hingson et al., 2002).

*Alcohol Abuse and Dependence: 31 percent of college students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and 6 percent for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the past 12 months, according to questionnaire-based self-reports about their drinking (Knight et al., 2002).

Comments

[liz]

August 31, 2004--Parents Blame College Policies for Son's Alcohol Death

The parents of Jared Dion, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student who died April 9 [2004] after drinking all night to celebrate his 21st birthday, plan to sue the university for allegedly encouraging drinking, ABC News reported Aug. 30.

The Dions have filed a notice of claim, which is the first step in filing a lawsuit under Wisconsin state law. The suit seeks $250,000 from the city of La Crosse and the university.

The Dions claim that their son would not have consumed as much alcohol if he had to drive home the night he died. Instead, Dion used the university's Safe Rider program, which transports students between campus and the bar district in La Crosse. The family also says the school encouraged binge-drinking by allowing the school paper to print advertisements from bars.

"[Safe-ride] programs have been a bit of a source of friction in our field, between the individual health consideration and the public-health consideration," said Ann Bradley, a spokeswoman with the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about the Safe Rider concept.

The claim also blames the city for failing to implement measures in response to the six other alcohol-related deaths of university students in previous years. Among the measures discussed but not implemented were increased nighttime police foot patrols in the riverfront park where Jared Dion fell into the Mississippi River and drowned; barriers blocking entrance to the park; and a secure railing along the waterfront.

Bryan Dion said the purpose of the lawsuit is to encourage the city and university to address the issue of drinking among students. "I could have said I'm going to sue you for a dollar, and they would have given me a dollar and told me to shut up," he said. "The only reason we're doing this is because nothing has been done."

 
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for an essay on this issue

[bobby]

There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of the best friend that i lost two years ago due to alcohol posisoning. And that freind is Jason Reinhardt. i lost or I need to say that we all losted him from alcohol poisoning or from what goes on every night at midnight a power hour.I am a part of a frat but after this my eyes have been opened to how much is to much. I have a question for you all what is the reason or point of trying to drink twenty-one shots at all you are not going to remember doing it and you will do it once if you live through the night.And who said that doing this is the only way to adulthood any way. i did lose some one i loved and cared about like a brother to me he Jason was my brother and I miss and love him so much and the crazy part I still hurt to this day and the hole that I have in my heart and life will never be filled.I still have freinds but i can not help to think what happens if what happened once happens again I see these guys just drink like they think nothing will happen and if it does we have to or will i have to go through that pain again of saying good by to some one else. One question who is next just because you are young do not think that you can not be hurt yes you can.And think about the people that will still be here missing you.I know i miss my best friend every day and i will never stop loveing and missing him.the pain never goes away I should know.

[Denny Soinski]

The article entitled “Risk to College Students” triggered some of my thoughts on "What Causes College Students to Abuse Alcohol"? Although the answers are probably many, the simplest answer, however, is this: “Because they can.”

When there are so few immediate consequences for excessive drinking, when repeat offenders are not disciplined, when parents are not notified about their children's drinking activities, when students get mixed messages from the college administration about alcohol, when students have seen their parents drinking alcohol in an irresponsible manner, when students are not informed about the long-tern negative consequences of alcohol abuse, when there are few alcohol-free social and recreational activities that are attractive to students, when minors or intoxicated students are served alcoholic beverages by the local drinking establishments, and when the drinking activities in the sororities and fraternities are not monitored--drinking and excessive drinking become so very easy.

When peer pressure or influence is added to the equation, when it is disregarded that drinking alcohol temporarily removes a person from his or her problems, when ignoring the belief or perception that drinking alcohol makes it easier to socialize with potential dating or sexual partners, when it is so acceptable to engage in activities that emphasize the drinking of alcohol, when the "good feelings" or the "fun" of getting an alcohol high or buzz are not considered, and when the party atmosphere at college is expected by students--it becomes more clear regarding what causes college students to abuse alcohol.

In a word, college students abuse alcohol because they can, because drinking makes them feel good, because drinking helps them relax and open up more in social situations, because drinking can be fun, because their friends and other students are doing it, because of peer pressure and peer influence, because alcohol is so accessible, because excessive drinking is accepted, and because many of them when they were in high school were told by their parents and other influential people that it is okay to get drunk “once in a while.”

DennyS
http://www.alcoholics-anonymous-info.com

[Stephen]

Today I almost died from an alcohol overdose, I passed out and vomited all over the place and didnt wake up for like 15 hours. I don't ever want to drink again, i'm fucking shaking all over the place, cold, fucking still throwing up... my heart hurts and is pounding, my head hurts and is pounding, I've seen 2 friends die from alcohol poisoning and another 4 from a drunken car accident. It just feels like my whole world is collapsing around me and the only thing i can do to get away from it is to drink my problems away... I need help... Oh god, someone help me...

[Liz]

I can't contact Stephen as he did not leave a real email address.

Stephen, go to an AA meeting today. Go to two. Keep going.

[christine kirsinas]

I too lost a son, Jason to alcohol poisening 4/26/2004............I feel for every parent who has the same loss.....my other son Justin was present during this 21st birthday celebration.......only to lose his brother after a coma for 4 days. Jason did save 4 others with organ transplant, but what a tragic loss for all of us............my best to Gordie Baily's family................

[Bob Gomez]

I am new to this page. My name is Bob Gomez and I live in Tampa. I did not lose a child but I did lose my mother in a sudden and tragic accident. I began a not-for profit organization that has now evolved into assisting the families which have lost a child while away at college. We have assisted 5 families since 2007. None , interestingly, have been from alcohol. The five actually included: suicide, heart failure, motorcycle accident, pedestrian accident, and a very tragic murder. So although I have not had an alcohol related occurence, I am sure we will deal with that sooner or later. My purpose in writing here is to share my organizaton , get your thoughts, and maybe even suggestions, My web page is www.daliasreach.org. I am open to phone calls as wel for those of you that are interested in our organization. 2009 is a growth year throughout Florida. Our long range plans are to get established in Florida throughout the State Univeristy System , community colleges, and private schools and then grow it nationally. Thx.