The headline in Tuesday’s Denver Post about Colorado’s most recent teen death from alcohol abuse boldly states that a new lesson has been learned.
With all due respect, I doubt it.
Colorado native Jason Wren, 19, was found dead in his University of Kansas Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity room Sunday afternoon after a night of extreme alcohol abuse. Margaritas with dinner, as many as 12 beers at the frat house afterwards, and uncounted sips of Jack Daniel’s.
Following his son’s death, Jay Wren implored the fraternity’s president to “please, in Jason’s memory, make the house dry.” Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, the fraternity will do no such thing.
The SAE folks will probably launch a campus-wide “education effort” to teach college students about the dangers of overdoing it with alcohol.
Inserting themselves in this mix will be KU administrators, distributing glossy posters and flyers around campus deriding alcohol altogether. They might even spring for a few seminars featuring alcohol-abuse experts who’ll dole out bleak statistics, such as these provided by Mothers Against Drunk Driving: the number of college students who die in alcohol-related incidents each year (1,700); the number of injuries that they experience each year due to alcohol abuse (599,000); and those who report being sexually assaulted each year while under the influence of alcohol (100,000).
There are many other desperate numbers that will be shared, yet what good will they do? Research has proven these types of interventions do not work, yet many schools continue to resort to them when a tragedy like Jason’s death occurs.
Thus far, the community at large has contented itself with the notion that college administrators will eventually figure it out. We fail to see what role we may be able to play in addressing the issue.
But we can make a difference.
Yesterday, while I was driving my children to school, we were tuned to KTCL- 93.3 FM on the radio. The DJ was promoting the station’s annual Keggs & Eggs gig, a day-long St. Patrick’s Day event held at a local bar starting with the first green beers being cracked at 7 a.m. Like most radio-sponsored events, listeners have various chances to win free tickets. Spotting the “Drunken Leprechaun” wins you two coveted front-row seats. Yesterday, one lucky student spotted the leprechaun in the student center at CU-Boulder, and was gleeful at the notion of missing a day of classes next week in order to start drinking at 7 a.m.
Does a radio station have any business promoting a drinking event on a college campus? Should CU even allow the event’s promoter on campus?
On behalf of Jason Wren and others who have died from alcohol abuse on college campuses, I call on CU to determine how such a thing can take place at a school that for years has struggled to shed its party-school image.
Until the community objects and puts pressure on college administrators, I fear there will be a lot more young college lives lost or ruined because of alcohol abuse.
Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist.
