You don't need a fraternity to binge drink

[Cube TX]

I often heard the non-greeks on campus, as well as other people not even students at the university, referring to Greek letter organizations as being dangerous because they promote drinking and other behavior. What I came to realize is that the vast majority of the drunks I knew were never in fraternities or even went to college.

I'm not here to pretend that I'm a saint. I myself used to drink way too much and was lucky to never get more than a single DWI and one night in jail. I even went to AA, as required by my probation. When I converted to Christianity I quit drinking for the most part and haven't had a drink since my honeymoon back in September 2005. My own chapter had two tragedies. One brother and friend had a car accident while drunk driving and speeding in 1998 and broke his neck when his car flipped. He still can't see out of one eye and is a paraplegic. After I'd graduated another brother died in a car accident near campus. This was in 2002. Though no toxicology report was ever released I know he was coming from a place where many students met to drink.

Anyway, my point is that the Greek organizations are the ones who seem to get more of the press when a death from overdrinking occurs. I live in El Paso, TX, which is about 40 miles away from Las Cruces, NM. At NMSU two students died in the 2004-05 school year from binge drinking. The first, Steven Judd, was a Delta Chi who had recently been elected president. He overdrank on his 21st birthday and went into a coma and later died. The newspaper articles were quick to mention the fraternity and noted that it "wasn't known" if his drinking was part of a hazing ritual. Later articles stated that he was pressured by his Delta Chi brothers to drink more.

NMSU launched a bunch of alcohol awareness programs and used Judd as their posterboy. They spoke of keeping students from doing this again. Four months later Chris Berry, another NMSU student, died on his 22nd birthday... from binge drinking. Berry was not in a fraternity. All of NMSU's supposed awareness went out the window. Since this one couldn't be blamed on a Greek letter organization we never heard much about it again.