By Leigh Donahue
There are definite patterns to excessive drinking on campus and to those who receive emergency treatment for alcohol-related injuries, University of Richmond student emergency medical technicians and staff members say.
"Most of the intoxicated calls I've gotten have been underclassmen, …, mostly freshmen," Senior Meghan MacNeal said.
MacNeal is a Virginia certified emergency medical technician and a member of the Spider Advanced Medical Emergency Service, or SAVERS, which is made up of certified student emergency medical technicians.
Calls received by SAVERS members during the day are usually emergencies involving faculty and staff, said MacNeal, a four-year veteran of SAVERS. "During the day, we can also get sports injuries, but usually at night it'll be drunken calls or injuries caused by intoxication," she said.
Most of the cases that SAVERS workers see are in freshmen dorms, especially Gray Court, MacNeal said. "I haven't gone to a single intoxicated call for any upperclassman, ever," she said.
In one Gray Court case, she responded to, she found a freshman sprawled out in his room with "puke down the front of his shirt, his fly unzipped," she said.
Many freshmen are testing their limits with alcohol in their new environments, said Juliette Landphair, dean of Westhampton College. "They're not sophisticated in really their understanding of the dangers of drinking," she said.
According to a memo released by the Westhampton College dean's office, 11 women were hospitalized in the fall semester of 2006. Of those 11, eight were freshmen and three were sophomores.
"Typically the people we see go to the hospital are first years that haven't had a lot of experience with alcohol," said Angie Harris, associate dean of Westhampton College.
"The fall's always worse than the spring," said Steve Bisese, Richmond's Vice President of Student Affairs. "It's usually worse with newer students."
There have been no deaths caused by alcohol consumption at UR, campus Police Chief Robert C. Dillard said. There have been some close calls though.
"We have two or three a year that the alcohol content is so high that it's kind of touch-and-go as far as if they're going to make it," Dillard said.
"Most of them €¦ will be €¦ drunk," she said, "but we've actually had some really bad ones where they were either not really breathing at all or breathing so slowly we had to assist them in breathing."
The worst case MacNeal has seen happened this semester, she said. A freshman female was unconscious and barely breathing when the paramedics arrived at a residence hall after a group of friends had called 911.
"When the ambulance came, you could see it on the medic's face," she said. "It was definitely not, €˜Oh yeah, she'll be fine,' you know, it was definitely, €˜We'll hope she pulls through.'"
Many of the alcohol poisoning cases on campus are attributed to binge drinking, Dean Landphair said. Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks for male and four or more drinks for a female in the span of two hours, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, or NIAAA.
The proportion of current drinkers who binge is highest in the 18- to 20-year-old group at 52 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More and more students are coming to Richmond with experience in excessive drinking in high school, said Bisese, former dean of Richmond College. "People are coming having some of these issues," he said. "It's not all developed in college."
Another factor in binge drinking is the popularity of pre-gaming or pre-loading before events, Dillard said. Pre-gaming has contributed to many of the cases of alcohol arrests and injuries, members of deans' offices said.
"They're trying to get in as much alcohol as they possibly can before they go to an event," said Joe Boehman, dean of Richmond College, "and that's where we see students getting into trouble."
Bisese said: "Sometimes people say, €˜Well, is that because you're enforcing the rules more so that people are afraid of getting in trouble so they're drinking in private before?'
"We've had really no change in the rules. In fact, the same sanctions for underage violations are basically in effect now that were in effect when we set them up in 1986."
Many students are using hard liquor as a way to become intoxicated. "That's a real danger zone for me," Landphair said, "knowing that often our women will gather in their rooms and do shots of vodka, you know, heavy, hard stuff."
Deans of other institutions across the country are dealing with the prevalence of pre-gaming before big events. Brandeis University's yearly event, Modfest, was canceled because three students were taken to the hospital as a result of pre-gaming, according to a Boston Globe article.
Boehman previously worked for the housing department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "We had similar numbers, in terms of percentage of the number of students that were involved," he said.
The worst case that Chief Dillard could recall was one involving a Richmond College student who fell in the ditch near the intersections of UR Drive and Westhampton Way last year. Students saw the student stumble into the ditch and were unable to pull him out.
When police pulled him out, his blood alcohol level was measured and found to be above 0.5 percent, the highest recorded from a student on campus. People are considered legally drunk when his or her blood alcohol content is above 0.08 percent, according to the NIAAA.
The student was taken to the trauma unit at the Medical College of Virginia and was put on a ventilator. He did recover, Dillard said. "If they had not told us, or if they had not happened to be behind him when he fell, it would have been fatal," he said.
In another case, a female student submitted to peer pressure and drank, even though she was allergic to alcohol, Dillard said. "She ended up in the hospital on a ventilator," he said. "She almost died, she was that allergic to it," he said. "She lived, and would you believe it, within a few weeks later, she did the same thing."
Before the national drinking age changed from 18 to 21 in 1984, students were not binge drinking as much as the do now, Dillard said. "Did we have students get intoxicated?" he asked. "Yes. But until recent years we never, ever, ever took a student to the hospital. Never. Just never had to."
Another topic of concern at many universities is alcohol and how it is used in hazing. Hazing is "any ritual required by a newcomer to get into an organization," former Richmond professor Hank Nuwer said. Many hazing cases involve binge drinking, he said.
The Greek system at Richmond does not have as many problems as other institutions, Nuwer said, because of the strong involvement of the Greek system in education and awareness. Some of the rules put in place, such as the outlawing of kegs on campus, have led to fewer alcohol incidents with the fraternities, Richmond police Lt. John Jacobs said.
"Fraternities are more worried about liability and so they're more cognizant of rules," Bisese said.
One recent incident involved the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The fraternity held an off-campus party at Center Ridge Drive, near Three Chopt Road, the night of Oct. 21 of this year after the football team defeated the University of Rhode Island. Thirty-five people, mostly UR students, were arrested for underage possession of alcohol, according to a recent article published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
No sanctions were brought against the fraternity because it was considered outside of the control of the fraternity or university, according to the article.
Another issue that arises with the consumption of alcohol is the possibility of a student consuming date-rape drugs, Dillard said. One case he recalled involved a "nearly perfect student," he said, who went to a bar at Shockoe Slip and got into an altercation. Police believed that she had been slipped a date-rape drug because of her behavior.
"She goes totally ballistic," Dillard said. She went to a restaurant next door and started beating a cook, he said. She then assaulted ABC investigators who arrived. "She ended up getting one of her teeth knocked out," he said.
There are three types of date-rape drugs: GHB, Ketamine, and Rohypnol, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. GHB (gamma hdroxybutyrate), when combined with alcohol, can cause nausea and breathing difficulties. Ketamine is an anesthetic used by doctors and veterinarians. It is also knows as "special K" or "vitamin K" and can cause dream-like statues and hallucinations, according to the NIDA.
Rohypnol, also known s "roofies," which can cause €˜anterograde amnesia,'which means individuals may not remember events they experienced while under the effects of the drug," according to the NIDA. All three drugs may cause death, especially when combined with alcohol.
One of the worst cases SAVERS President Rachel Dillon has seen involved a Westhampton College student who had problems walking on her own after ingesting too much alcohol as well as other substances.
"We found out that she actually had like two or three date-rape drugs in her system," Dillon, a junior, said.
The work hard, party hard mentality held by many students is also a factor in binge drinking, Landphair said. "The idea is that drinking heavily is somehow going to relieve your stress when of course it just does the opposite," she said.
The majority of the arrests made by the campus police are liquor-law violations. The police department's website lists annual statistics, and it states that there were 157 alcohol arrests made and more than 1,200 alcohol referrals to the dean's office from 2004 to 2006. Eight of the 157 arrests were in residence halls; the other 149 arrests were on campus. More than 1,000 of the referrals were made after incidents in residence halls; the other 154 were on campus.
An arrest is made by a police officer, and a report is filed for each arrest. A residence life staff member or a faculty member can make a referral to the dean's office.
The Richmond College dean's office saw 450 students in the 2006-2007 school year, according to a memo released by the office. Out of those 450 cases, 289 involved alcohol.
There are more referrals each year to the Richmond College dean's office than the Westhampton College dean's office. "The men are a lot more willing to host parties in their rooms and their apartments so they do bear the brunt of the responsibility a lot of the times," said Patrick Benner, the Associate Dean of Richmond College.
"We do tend to see more males get arrested for alcohol consumption, because their behavior tends to be a little more over the top," said campus Police Capt. Beth Simonds said. "They tend to get in fights or become belligerent or more aggressive." Westhampton students tend to get transported to the hospital more than Richmond College students, she said.
Each case is looked at on an individual basis, Dean Boehman said. There are three sanctions for a first-time offender that are given by both colleges, Harris said. They are a disciplinary warning, a fine and an alcohol education program.
The warning remains on the student's record until graduation, Harris said. It stays on the student's judicial file but is not released to parties outside the dean's office, she said.
A student will receive between a $25 to $50 fine for their first offense. If the charge was public intoxication, an underage student will have to pay $50, while a student of legal age will have to pay $25, according to the university's alcohol policy. A $25 fine is given to an underage student possessing alcohol. The collected fines fund alcohol education programs.
The student will also have to meet with the area coordinator, if the event took place in a residence hall, or with the dean if the action took place outside of a residence hall or apartment, Boehman said.
An online education course called Third Millenium has to be completed by a first-time offender. The class takes less than two hours to take. "The idea is that they're learning from their mistakes," Harris said.
"The sanctions are at the discretion of the dean's office," Benner said, "and we look at the severity of the incident, what the student's involvement was, what their past record was, things of that nature."
There are different levels of consequences for students who are arrested or referred to the dean for an alcohol violation. Second-time offenders are put into the RISK, or Reduced Impairment Through Supplemental Knowledge program.
The RISK program is a six-hour course completed by a student off-campus, Boehman said. It is taught by trained counselors and involves education on alcohol and drug abuse.
In even more serious cases, a student can be referred off-campus to Family Counseling Center for Recovery, or FCRR, the for inpatient or outpatient care, Boehman said.
"If we feel a student has a concern over the amount their drinking, the level that they're drinking, things of that nature," Boehman said, "we will have them go do a formal assessment and do extensive counseling through them."
Community service may be awarded to offenders in the Richmond College system. These assignments have ranged from 10 to 100 hours, Benner said. Students may work for UR facilities, campus recreation, the Boys & Girls Club and others.
"A second offense could mean termination of their housing contract and it could possibly mean suspension," Boehman said. Suspension is usually for one semester, he said. Occasionally students are asked to leave campus permanently for excessive alcohol use.
"Our disciplinary system is not meant to put a dagger in somebody for a first offense," Bisese said. "It's really designed to have there be some kind of involvement so that you don't have a second offense or you learn about what you need to learn to take care of yourself."
Even if they're underclassmen, students shouldn't worry about the consequences they could face later when they see that a fellow student is in need of aid, Dillon advised. "We're here to help; we're not here to get you in trouble," she said.
SAVERS members urge students to seek help if they need it. "If someone's seriously ill, especially with alcohol poisoning, call 911," Dillon, a former resident assistant, said. "Don't try to take care of them yourself because people can die very easily. There are people to take care of you."