Alpha Phi dies of alcohol poisioning at SDSU

[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.