Drinking to death

Three Clemson University students were recently charged with several alcohol-related misdemeanors after Benjamin Garrison, an 18-year-old pledge in Sigma Nu fraternity, died of alcohol poisoning. At the time of his death, his blood alcohol level was 0.38 percent, nearly five times above the level the governement considers “binge” drinking.\nNo one said Benjamin Garrison did anything against his will. Prosecutor Chrissy Adams assured the public that no one poured alcohol down his throat or forced him to drink, and as such, no one is being charged with anything more than typical underage drinking misdemeanors. But no one simply picks up a bottle and starts downing alcohol to that extent without external or internal pressure to do so. In today’s college environment, the pressure to binge drink can be high and the deterrents only occur as an afterthought - too little, too late.\nAlcohol-related arrests are nothing new to colleges around the country, but when a death occurs, many still react with surprise. By this point, however, most of us students react with little more than a shrug. We have come to expect the possibility of alcohol abuse, so we can barely muster up the outrage to blame anyone or anything when it happens. Meanwhile, the charges against these three students are slaps on the wrist that could probably be avoided entirely with pre-trial diversions.\nA student dies, we turn away and the grim tally continues.\nWhere should we lay the blame?\nObviously, Garrison and the three cohorts who provided the alcohol share much of the responsibility, but we shouldn’t view it simply as theirs alone. Underage drinking on campus didn’t start with them, nor will it end with them. Binge drinking and the associated risks have long been grafted into the “college experience,” and universities, local governments and students seem less than eager to do anything about it.\nAt this point, we seem to mop up the messes where we find them, charge those who get caught and try to forget the underlying problem. Anyone who believes this problem could be solved with a simple increase in enforcement is missing the point. As long as universities continue to view alcohol abuse as a disciplinary nuisance and not a systemic problem, that system’s effects will continue to present themselves as alcohol-related death tolls.\nWhen a shock to that system occurs — in the form of the death of a student — we should reexamine the causes that led us there. It’s all too easy to simply fall into complacency. We mourn the death for a second before reaching for the bottle yet again.\nLet’s not merely hold up the ones who get caught as the symbols of alcohol abuse. We live in a system that consistently condones excessive drinking, and Benjamin Garrison died as a result of that system. Perhaps it’s time we recognize that Garrison’s death is just one symptom of a greater culture of drinking, one in which none of us can claim complete innocence.