Brutal Sorority Hazing at Dartmouth-Kappa Kappa Gamma:

[33girl]

Originally Posted by amIblue?

PS in looking back at attitudes among my fellow students, it is difficult for me to reconcile this forced drinking stuff with my reality of partying. Yes, we might share with our friends, but we weren't crying if someone said no. That just meant more for another day.

Totally true. The only time we ever cared if someone wasn't drinking is if they had a stick up their ass about people who were, or if they were being a bump on a log. And even then I can't imagine forcing them to drink - we would just go someplace where we could avoid them. The fact that you are paying for the booze and not sneaking it out of your parents' liquor cabinet - or that there is a limited amount of it at a party - makes you far less likely to be insistent that everyone has to imbibe.

[amIblue?]

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

The author didn't claim that she said no and was forced. She just said that the members handed her drinks and that she drank them. That seems consistent with your experience (and with mine when I was a college student). Again, we don't know if her story is true, but in her version of events, the expectation that she drink is enough to create a dangerous hazing situation. The members have a duty not to create the pressure to drink in the first place.

It would be a much better and safer world if every young person had the self-assurance to say no in that situation, but most people do not.

Tying in the George Desdunes death at Cornell that the NYTimes wrote about today, that student died from a .4 BAC.

Her version of the events is this: "we were guided into the back seat of a car and one of our future sisters commanded us to chug the alcoholic punch that had been pre-prepared for each of us in individual 64-ounce water bottles."

Sounds like an order to me rather than a simple expectation. That's what I was talking about, which is much different than asking someone if they'd like to have a drink and sharing it with them. Even with the expectation you mention, under the more casual social type of drinking, a person can accept a drink and pretend to sip at it if he/she is uncomfortable with saying no, no harm no foul.

My point was that it is beyond my experience to "command" someone to drink. However, there are enough of these stories in the world that I know it does happen.

(Also, "pre-prepared" is a stupid, made up word.)

[SigKapSweetie]

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

Tying in the George Desdunes death at Cornell that the NYTimes wrote about today, that student died from a .4 BAC.

People can die with a BAL of 400. Or 300, or 200, or even 100. My point is that this:

...a .4 BAC is coma and death. I was literally one sip of alcohol away from dying.

is crap. There is no magic number for alcohol content above which everyone dies. What that girl wrote could lead other students to think that if they're only at a BAL of 300 or 350, they'll be fine, and that isn't necessarily the case. The use of medical misinformation to create drama irritates me, and that's what she was doing with that quote.