Binge Drinking Essay, Research Paper

Benjamin Wynne, 20, underwent two of the most time-honored rites of passage at Louisiana State University last week . He received a pledge pin from the fraternity that voted him into the brotherhood, and he got rip-roaring drunk to celebrate. Wynne and his fellow Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers began their bacchanalia with an off-campus keg party featuring ?funneling,? in which beer is shot through a rubber hose into the drinkers mouth. Next came a communal bender at Murphy?s bar, a frat hangout a few hundred yards form L.S.U. There, the libation of choice was ?Three Wise Men,? a high-octane mix of 151-proof rum, Crown Royal whiskey and Jagermeister liqueur. Wynne ?was staggering, but no more than a lot of other people,? says a college woman who was there. The festivities ended with upperclassmen wheeling pledges out of the bar in shopping carts, because they too far gone to walk. ?They were like firemen carrying people out of a burning building,? says Christopher Sule, an L.S.U. student who works at a sandwich shop next door. When police were called to the frat house hours later, they found almost two dozen men passed out on the living room floor. By early morning, Wynne was dead of alcohol poisoning, and three of his fraternity brother had been hospitalized. An autopsy found that Wynne, who downed the equivalent of about 24 drinks, had a blood alcohol level six times the amount at which the state considers a person intoxicated.(Cohen,1,2)

This is just one story of many of an unfortunate alcohol related death that has occurred on a college campus because of binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as drinking 6 to 7 drinks consecutively.(Wechsler, Austin,1) Over the past few years binge drinking has become more and more common among college students. A Harvard survey of 18,000 undergraduates found that 44% said they had engaged in binge drinking in the previous two weeks.(Cohen,2) Binge drinking is more common among college students than any other group. While 49 percent of college students binge drink only 28 percent of their non-college counterparts do so. Among college students the ones the belonged to a fraternity where almost twice as likely to binge drink. Students that binged saw a drop in grades. Students with an A average consume a little more than three drinks per week, B students have almost five drinks per week, C students average more six drinks per week and students getting and Ds of Fs consume an average on nine drinks per week.(Core Institute par.6)