A half-eaten sandwich. A bag of chips. Leftovers “ransacked” from her sorority’s kitchen. Missing keys. Rumpled outfit from the night before. Cloudy memories of a cab ride with strangers, parties at friends’ houses. Jennifer (name has been changed) may have had the time of her life – too bad she couldn’t remember anything. “I didn’t play detective because I really didn’t want to know,” says Jennifer, a junior. “The only time I tried to find out what happened was when I lost my keys at a formal I went to the night before and had to trace back how I got home and where I went.” After six nights of blackouts – a total of 72 hours that she doesn’t remember – and five successive mornings of waking up in a haze of nausea, regret and unexpected fullness at the beginning of Spring Quarter, Jennifer decided she needed to get help. “I was obviously drinking just to black out,” she says. “I looked at the situation and had to ask myself – Is this just college or am I an alcoholic?” After seeing an advertisement in The DAILY, she went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at the Women’s Center on Wednesday nights to find out.
Though Jennifer found out she isn’t a textbook alcoholic – someone who needs alcohol to get through everyday tasks – she definitely has a “unhealthy relationship” with everyone’s favorite social lubricant. “(Other meeting attendees’) goals were to stay sober for life – mine was to stay sober until I was comfortable,” she says. But her pre-AA story is not too different from the typical “Northwestern nightlife:” Keg Mondays, Deuce Thursdays and surfing open bars downtown as a carefree girl with no inkling that her nights were out of the ordinary. Jennifer says she starting blacking out more regularly after she and her boyfriend broke up when he left to study in Austria. “My thought was ‘I’m single again, I can act like it,’ which is not something that I do,” she says. Freshman and sophomore year she drank, but rarely to the excess that prompted her to seek help. Growing up in Miami, Fla., she went out every weekend and didn’t feel the high from the first taste of freedom experienced by many freshmen. Only one night from sophomore year sticks out in her mind. “I remember going to a jello shots party, where I got so sick. I mean how many jello shots can you have before you feel drunk – they’re like candy,” she says, laughing. “I was lying on the toilet throwing up and I said to my boyfriend, ‘Just let me die here on this toilet, right now, please.”
She noticed the psychological effects more than the physical. She felt dirty, full of regret and out of control. “In the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘Should I really be letting this person touch me?’ or ‘Am I being taken advantage of or is this my own decision?”
Jennifer says her friends were incredibly supportive of her decision to go to AA, some even saying “things like ‘I need to do that, too.'” But not everyone recognized that behavior like Jennifer’s blackout week is unhealthy. “Others gave me the ‘it’s college, it’s normal’ thing,” she says. “People avoid these kinds of discussions.”
As far as alcohol scare stories go, hers is rarely told. The case of Matthew Sunshine, a freshman who died from alcohol poisoning in Foster House nearly one year ago, is the most recent tragedy at NU that caused a serious consideration of alcohol policy. Immediately after his death, William Banis, vice president of student affairs, released a statement: “On behalf of the University, I extend our deepest sympathies to Matthew’s family and to his fellow students and friends here at Northwestern,” Banis wrote. “The loss of any one member of our community affects us all.” There was no mention of policy or blame in the following weeks.
Sunshine is the rare yet tragic extreme; Jennifer is the hidden self-exploration and questioning that maybe “college” is a poor justification for the life-is-short, feel-good, no-fear lifestyle embraced by so many. When the Office of Judicial Affairs reported that more than 80 students were hospitalized in fall 2008 alone for alcohol poisoning, students have said they began to question NU’s existing alcohol policy. And as for Jennifer, does the University have a concern for legal drinkers who don’t go to the hospital, but consider themselves, as Jennifer puts it, “under the mentality that they need something to do that isn’t totally lame, so why not drink?”
The weird part about drinking at NU, Jennifer explains, is that binging isn’t uncommon – it’s almost assumed. Alcohol is a painkiller for the socially awkward situations that define NU’s social landscape. “Look at the Keg on a Monday – it’s some weird social experiment. Imagine going to the Deuce completely dry – scary. (Alcohol) is an outlet for people.” The reckless drinking is the norm in some social circles, but definitely dangerous, she says. “When you’re wasted and trying to take care of a friend who’s sick, it’s like the blind leading the blind,” she says. “Definitely not a good thing.”
Alcohol amnesty was first liberally thrown around the Associated Student Government elections. Michael Lobel, a member of the Alcohol Safety Task Force, says the committee wanted to create a policy that acknowledged student drinking and made the environment safer for students. “As to whether or not students should be drinking as much as they do – that’s not what we’re dealing with. We want the university to emphasize safety.” Lobel mentioned Washington University, which has an “open door policy,” meaning that students can drink in their rooms as long as the door remains open, which is meant to discourage dangerous drinking.
The proposed program includes legal amnesty for students who require hospitalization, but also alcohol-free activities designed to make Norris University Center a 24-hour hangout spot, as well as a university-wide calendar of events. Jim Neumeister, NU’s director of judicial affairs, told The Daily in May that NU already has an amnesty policy – it’s just not publicized. “We often take no action against students – even if they may have violated a university rule – when they help another student in a crisis,” he said. Hospitalized students usually are monitored afterward and are put on probation, he said. Their parents may also be notified, but otherwise there is no disciplinary action.
Amber (name has been changed) is a typical party-hardy freshman who jokingly says “I’m an embarrassment,” to her roommate who is sitting on the floor beside her. Photos of her family and sorority cover the walls where she sits, working on homework, her wild nest of dark curly hair draped over her shoulders. Last night, Amber estimates she pounded between 12 and 14 shots before passing out on a couch in a fraternity house and waking up to “hilarious” drawings on her body. “I never drink like ‘Oh, I’ll have a nice glass of this with my meal,” she says, laughing. “It’s always to an excess.” Amber is from El Salvador, where the drinking age is 18. Though she drank “a lot” throughout high school, she says the environment was different – people didn’t need to go to the hospital; they seemed to know their limits. Though she drinks about four nights a week at NU, she’s never had to go to the hospital – she’s only seen it. “I’ve seen guys crowded around a girl feeding her water or guys throw people in the shower to make them feel better,” she says. “People misbehave more here because it’s illegal and forbidden. I feel like drinking is a kind of socially cool thing to do, anyway. There were definitely times when medical assistance would have been optimal, but we feel like we have to take it into our own hands so we don’t get in trouble.”
The biggest problem with the current policy is that it is unpublished and kept a relative secret. Lobel has been working on the online aspect of the project, creating an accessible system so students know what the policy is. “Right now there’s no explicit amnesty policy, but there are circumstances where some students are not punished for calling an ambulance. There are a lot of rumors that this is the norm
, and I think we need to give students a better idea of what the parameters are,” he says. Amber says she has a friend who once went to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Another was written up at the freshman quad formal. In both cases, Amber didn’t really know what happened at Student Affairs, or how either of them were punished.
Toben Nelson, an assistant professor of public heath at the University of Minnesota, surveyed thousands of college students nationwide for a 12 year-long (1989-2000) study conducted at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The study’s main finding, he says, was that drinking activity remained steady over time, though certain campuses tended toward heavy use more than others. This begs the question of whether binge drinking is a societal problem or an issue only on certain campuses such as NU. He adds that “the forbidden fruit argument is simply not true. Of-age students are far more likely to binge drink. An amnesty program does not necessarily apply to them.” As a reaction to this research and an increasing consciousness of the situation on college campuses, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism created a task force to recommend courses of action for universities. In 2002, it published the results, which included increasing excise taxes (which has not happened nationally in more than 30 years), and local-level efforts like mandating training for bars and limiting the number of liquor stores and bars near campuses. Nelson says it shouldn’t be surprising that these measures haven’t been implemented. A NU student could take his or her yearly expenditures at the Keg, Hundo and EV 1 alone and multiply it by 8,000. “Local establishments have a vested interest in generating revenue from students,” Nelson says. Translation: The Keg wants your money just like any other business, and its owners are in no rush to deter students from guzzling toward their profit.
So where do NU’s proposed policies fall? Medical amnesty and non-alcoholic programming actually aren’t supported by any studies or other empirical evidence, Nelson points out. The NIAAA also found that educational programs, like the AlcoholEdu program NU freshman endure, are not statistically supported either. As for amnesty, Nelson says he doesn’t know of any studies that have found evidence for or against these types of initiatives; it is a highly controversial issue within the substance abuse research community. However, Dr. David Anderson of George Mason University offers a slightly different perspective. He reiterates that he “cares about saving lives,” a persuasive reason for an amnesty program despite a lack of empirical evidence. Anderson advises schools to be consistent in their policies, but not to set up a “police state.” With alcohol amnesty, he says, there must come a follow-up. “There needs to be a policy in place that asks what caused the behavior to happen if medical amnesty has been offered,” he says. “I strongly support saving a person’s life, but also providing a professional, clinical follow-up.” Some universities require students go to counseling; some call parents or impose other restrictions. NU currently has this stance, but it is subject to change as the revised policy is drafted.
It seems everyone agrees binge drinking is high-risk. Nelson, however, stressed that amnesty policies protect against the rare, but leave students open to more common health problems. Deaths are tragic but also infrequent – it’s more likely that students will be sexually assaulted when drinking (50,000 each year nationwide), get into fights or jump off of things. Anderson conducts a national survey of college students every three years. His latest data from 2006 finds a myriad of damaging behaviors result from alcohol consumption, which amnesty programs don’t prevent. Of all cases of physical injury students experienced, 39 percent were fueled by alcohol. Alcohol was involved with 69 percent of acquaintance rapes, 58 percent of violence and 59 percent of unsafe sexual practices. These problems happen regardless of age, which is why amnesty programs may only reach out of a small sect of NU’s population. The escalation of alcohol-related hospitalizations may mean that NU’s stance is ineffective, and in need of deeper examination outside of amnesty. “We need to be clear with the message that we’re sending to the student body,” Anderson says. “If the message is, ‘We’re going to wink wink, nod nod,’ (at underage drinking and drinking) there’s a problem.”
After 40 days of sobriety, Jennifer had two beers two weeks ago, and says she “felt good, like I was in control of the situation.” This weekend, she relapsed. After downing eight drinks at an open bar downtown (constantly saying to her friends ‘Let’s keep going’), she hit two other bars and ended the night in 7-Eleven, where she poured a bottle of Smirnoff into a Slurpee. “There’s no reason to drink that much. I realized that I definitely have a bad relationship with alcohol,” she says. Drinking in moderation in an environment where binging is a social painkiller if not a prerequisite is almost more difficult than staying sober.
Jennifer plans to be sober this summer while she lives in Washington, D.C. with her boyfriend. She says her decision is “based on needing to get my life back together.”
