I am sure that at one time or another we have all heard the saying “I’ll drink to that.” In fact for many college students the term seems to be a rite of passage. The idea of “drink, drink, drink until you can drink no more” is often the norm. In some cases, the practice of college students forcing fellow co-eds to “drink till they drop” has become all too commonplace. The death of Cornell University student George Desdunes, a 19-year-old Haitian immigrant student, in February has once again brought the issue out of college life and excessive alcohol consumption to the forefront of debate.
His mother, Maria Lourdes Andre, understandably filled with anger and grief, has filed a $25 million wrongful death suit against the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The fraternity has had its charter revoked by the university. By all accounts, Desdunes, a pre-med major, had a fabulously promising future. Unfortunately, it was cut short by a senseless act of immaturity combined with alcohol.
This tragic story aside, the fact is that binge drinking causes more than 79,000 deaths in the United States every year according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Binge drinking is defined as more than four standard drinks for a man and three drinks for a woman on one single occasion. These numbers alone would qualify a large percentage of college students as binge drinkers. This is a problem that often leads to other vices on college campuses. For example, a study from the Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention produced the following results about the dangers of excessive drinking and consumption:
Alcohol is estimated to be involved with:
