Alpha Phi dies of alcohol poisioning at SDSU

[cuteASAbug]

Alphagamuga, do you know what members of your chapter smoke weed, drop e, snort, etc.? Do you know which ones smoke? Do you know which ones drink underage? Do you know when each one of them is doing each one of those things? Do you really think that it's possible for girls in a sorority, especially in a medium-large sized chapter to know this information about each of their members? I completely agree with you that risk management should be about preventing deaths, but sometimes there is only so much information that you can know about a member, especially if she goes out of her way to hide things from the chapter, and I don't know about you, but I joined a sorority to have 40 sisters, not 40 policemen.

[Drolefille]

IMO, Risk Management isn't just about covering our asses. Yes, this chapter could potentially have dropped her and saved themselves this news coverage. That would NOT have helped the member.

And seeing how SDSU is well known for their drug and alcohol problems, Risk Management isn't something to address with one individual member; it sounds like the chapters, and more importantly the university need to be getting involved.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

IMO, Risk Management isn't just about covering our asses. Yes, this chapter could potentially have dropped her and saved themselves this news coverage. That would NOT have helped the member.

And seeing how SDSU is well known for their drug and alcohol problems, Risk Management isn't something to address with one individual member; it sounds like the chapters, and more importantly the university need to be getting involved.

I agree completely about the first part, and I don't know anything about SDSU, but what you've said would seem to be true almost everyplace.

[bejazd]

Yes, SDSU has a reputation for being a party school. But these kinds of issues- i.e. binge drinking and recreational drug use can start in middle school! Keep in mind that SDSU has 30K students. It's a small city.
You can go there and get a great education and go off and lead a great life, or you can party until you flunk out and go bag groceries. I've seen people do both!

I hope what the greek community does with this is to develop more alternative social activities so new members can get to their first formal and not feel like it wouldn't be a formal without alcohol and..whatever. But it's a tough sell to get young people to realize they can have a great social life and be responsible. Grad Nite at my son's HS was cancelled this year because not enough kids signed up...and the ASB leadership set the tone when they announced they would not go because it was alcohol free. How sad is that?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by bejazd

Yes, SDSU has a reputation for being a party school. But these kinds of issues- i.e. binge drinking and recreational drug use can start in middle school! Keep in mind that SDSU has 30K students. It's a small city.
You can go there and get a great education and go off and lead a great life, or you can party until you flunk out and go bag groceries. I've seen people do both!

I hope what the greek community does with this is to develop more alternative social activities so new members can get to their first formal and not feel like it wouldn't be a formal without alcohol and..whatever. But it's a tough sell to get young people to realize they can have a great social life and be responsible. Grad Nite at my son's HS was cancelled this year because not enough kids signed up...and the ASB leadership set the tone when they announced they would not go because it was alcohol free. How sad is that?

What's ASB?

This post brings up a point worth noting I think.

Sometimes, you have to know your audience, and that messages that seem overblown, exploitative, and sentimentalized to adults are actually appealing to the age group who most need to be reached with the message which often is the self absorbed, unrealistic, overly dramatic adolescent. So discussions about drugs and alcohol abuse actually might be more effective at the level that disgusts 33Girl.

[SWTXBelle]

When I was a senior in high school, my freshman crush (who was in college at the time) died in a drunk driving incident.
No one had to hammer the message home to us. All of us who went to the funeral got it. It CAN happen to you - you are NOT invincible. I know that it made a deep impression on many of us. Sometimes it takes an incident you can connect with - someone you knew, or knew of - to bring home that message.

[bejazd]

ASB=Associated Student Body. Student council. Senior class officers. The people who should have set the example for others...chose not to.

You are right about audience AlphaGam. After this incident at SDSU, I asked my son what he knew about binge drinking. He didn't know what it was! and I was really surprised because we have open discussions about this kind of stuff all the time in our house, and he had just finished the drug/alcohol ed part of health at school. So it was an opportunity for us to talk about it. I'm trying to teach him that you can learn to drink a beer with a piece of pizza and enjoy it, and there's a big difference between that and being drunk every time you go out. It's a start, anyway.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

I agree completely about the first part, and I don't know anything about SDSU, but what you've said would seem to be true almost everyplace.

I only know what I've heard on GC and everyone SDSU student has said they're a drug and party school. I mention it because on my campus I'm sure there were drugs, but my chapter would have dealt with it if a member had had problems. (And no, booting her out would not be the first reaction) But if it's so pervasive, there's no way that the chapter, made of members possibly just as into the drugs, will deal with the situation.

[srmom]

33girl, As a parent, I would never say, "don't do this because you might end up dead like so and so." about a friend who had died, that is incredibly insensitive. But your comment:

They didn't need to use another human being or his/her misfortune to do that. If parents can't convey the gravity of the situation to their kids on its own merits, they're pathetic.

is too strong, IMO.

My brother died by getting into a car with a kid who had been drinking. He was 13 years old. It completely devastated my family! I have told my kids about the experience with the idea that they should know that bad things do happen when you least expect them to and that noone is immune. I hope that they have listened to me because it would kill me if anything happened to them.

Anyway, sometimes parents don't say things kids want to hear and sometimes kids don't hear what we're trying to say because it isn't coming out right. All we can hope is that there is love and understanding in the communication.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by srmom

My brother died by getting into a car with a kid who had been drinking. He was 13 years old. It completely devastated my family! I have told my kids about the experience with the idea that they should know that bad things do happen when you least expect them to and that noone is immune. I hope that they have listened to me because it would kill me if anything happened to them.

There's a BIG difference between telling kids about someone they never knew (I'm assuming, unless you were really really really older than your brother) 20+ years after the fact, and shoving messages down their throats when they're devastated at the loss of a friend.

MC, if my child started a dialogue with me about drunk driving as a result of a friend's death in an accident or something - that would be fine. But if they wanted to NEVER discuss it (it being their friend's death) with me, that would be fine too. We can talk about drunk driving some other time. Their friend DIED. That's hard enough for them to deal with no matter how it happens. I don't understand why people think it's OK to use a teenager's or young adult's death by misadventure to "teach a lesson" to his peers. One of the women here was killed in a car accident several years ago. We certainly didn't have a company wide showing of a movie about why we should use our seatbelts. No one would have sat through something so insensitive.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I don't understand why people think it's OK to use a teenager's or young adult's death by misadventure to "teach a lesson" to his peers.

And I don't understand why you don't think a parent or teacher can initiate a respectful conversation with their kid or student when tragedy hits close to home. I also don't understand why you can't see that such respectful conversations can be had without being insenstive, without lecturing, without showing stupid movies, without hitting people over the head or shoving messages down their throats, and without dishonoring anyone's memory or anyone's feelings.

I guess we will just have to agree that we don't understand each other on this one and move on. But please, just because someone doesn't share your understanding doesn't make them "pathetic" or "revolting."

[srmom]

33girl, I completely agree with "not shoving it down their throats." after the death of a friend. As I said before, that would be totally insensitive. (and you're right in that my kids didn't know him)

But, in the case of the death of a friend, I might take the time to gently tell my child how much I love him and how hard it would be for me to lose him - under any circumstances - and to please be careful and use good judgement. I don't think that is "shoving it down their throat"

There has to be sensitivity in everything, but as we all know, that is not always the case. I can see how, out of fear, a parent might freak out and say something in the wrong way. Or how someone, out of a feeling of frustration and loss, might try to turn the death of a friend or relative into a crusade. Noone does everything perfectly and to everyone's satisfaction all the time, especially in parenting. We are all just doing the best we can and are learning along the way...

But, this is a completely different discussion

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by cuteASAbug

Alphagamuga, do you know what members of your chapter smoke weed, drop e, snort, etc.? Do you know which ones smoke? Do you know which ones drink underage? Do you know when each one of them is doing each one of those things? Do you really think that it's possible for girls in a sorority, especially in a medium-large sized chapter to know this information about each of their members? I completely agree with you that risk management should be about preventing deaths, but sometimes there is only so much information that you can know about a member, especially if she goes out of her way to hide things from the chapter, and I don't know about you, but I joined a sorority to have 40 sisters, not 40 policemen.

Nobody wants a policeman around until you're about to be the victim a crime and then you're probably really happy to see him. I think the same is drug for risk management. It's troublesome and invasive until a member dies or is seriously injured in a manner related to risk management, and then everybody wishes they'd done something differently.

I'm sure I wouldn't have appreciated a lot of drug and alcohol related investigations in my chapter when I was in college,* and I'm sure my perspective is different because I'm long out of college and am almost realistically old enough to have a kid in college.

But it seems to me that we do know when people are doing dangerous stuff, maybe not every sister in a chapters if the chapter is really big, but if someone has a problem it can be obvious at events. It will often be visible to a person's roommates or their friends. I think it's pretty rare that people so effectively hide their drug use or alcohol abuse that no one in the chapter knows, even without an investigation.

I don't think the choice is police state vs. free for all.

*although I don't really think drugs were a big problem in our chapter. It doesn't really matter though. I know we had underage drinking and people who made bad decisions about drinking and driving (or more exactly riding with others who had been drinking) when they were out not at GLO events.

[jon1856]

Originally Posted by cuteASAbug

Alphagamuga, do you know what members of your chapter smoke weed, drop e, snort, etc.? Do you know which ones smoke? Do you know which ones drink underage? Do you know when each one of them is doing each one of those things? Do you really think that it's possible for girls in a sorority, especially in a medium-large sized chapter to know this information about each of their members? I completely agree with you that risk management should be about preventing deaths, but sometimes there is only so much information that you can know about a member, especially if she goes out of her way to hide things from the chapter, and I don't know about you, but I joined a sorority to have 40 sisters, not 40 policemen.

Back in the day, my answer to your questions would have been yes and that would have been accurate to about 90%.