Wasted

	Photo by Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis Illustration Services

Increasing numbers of students are deciding not to drink at all, but more are also drinking to excess. The death of senior David Thornton proves that UC Davis, never considered a party school, is not immune to the danger.

By Teri Bachman

It's Thursday night at the end of spring quarter, and I'm riding shotgun in the Tipsy Taxi, ASUCD's safe ride home for inebriated students. At 12:57 a.m. we pull up at 5th and G in front of the Cantina and the Paragon, the places to be on Thursdays. It's at least the third time we've stopped at this location since we began the evening run at 9, and each time the crowd of revelers outside has gotten bigger and rowdier. Now, with bar closing time approaching, they've filled the sidewalk and the Paragon's outdoor deck and are spilling into G Street. Everyone seems to be having a fine time--except for one young man, who sits hunched over on the curb, vomiting between his legs. A friend stands over him, holding a pitcher of water. The sick young man refuses to take a drink, and after a while, the friend pours the water over his head.

1:36 a.m. and we're back. This time Janet, the driver, locks the doors of the van before we pull up because the crowd is even bigger and louder, and as the familiar 15-passenger white van pulls up, would-be riders rush the vehicle. For safety reasons and to keep the van on schedule, drivers are not allowed to accept passengers who didn't call to request a ride, and most of those rebuffed go away angry. The sick young man still sits on the curb, immobile, head hanging. His friend is gone.

2:01. Back again. The curb-sitter is gone, but in his place stands another young man, this one urinating against the side of the Paragon's deck, oblivious to the many people around him. While we wait for our passengers, a fight breaks out in the street next to the van, close enough that I hear the splat as a fist connects with a jaw. The police materialize immediately and pull the two apart and away.

In Memory of David Thornton David passed away on April 3, after doing "21 for 21"--drinking 21 shots of alcohol on his 21st birthday. Whenever I read articles about David, about his birthday celebration and about how he died that night, I never feel a connection between him and the words I am reading. I find no trace of him, only a description of the last night of his life. It occurred to me that I was feeling this way because I did not want to accept that he was gone, that I had lost my boyfriend, that I would never see him again. I know it is more than that, though. He is not there in those articles, there is no sense of who Dave was or how much we've lost. So, I wanted to write something for him, for myself and for those who knew and loved Dave because there is much more to be said about him than a description of the night he died. more...

It was here, only two months earlier, that UC Davis senior David Thornton drank himself to death. It was his 21st birthday, and he was killed by the 21 celebratory shots he consumed during a night of partying that ended at the Paragon. If that tragedy has had an effect on the party scene, it's not apparent.

It's been almost 20 years since I was one of those college student revelers --back when the Graduate was the Thursday night hot spot. I wonder if something more than the location has changed about the party scene. Was our behavior this extreme?

Good news, bad news

In a seeming contradiction, a just-completed survey of UC Davis student drinking behavior has lots of good news for a campus distraught over David's pointless death: Nearly a third of UC Davis students don't drink at all. More than 70 percent consume three drinks or less when they party. Only 7 percent say they binge drink frequently, according to the survey, which was conducted by the American College Health Association. (Binge drinking is defined as five or more drinks for men, four or more for women, in one sitting; frequently is defined as more than once a week.) Those are particularly good figures when compared with college students across the country; nationally only 19 percent abstain, while 23 percent are frequent binge drinkers, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study. Those numbers confirm the popular perception that UC Davis is not a party school. So what's the worry?

The worry at UC Davis lies in the 18 percent of UC Davis students who do drink too much, the ones who even occasionally binge drink. The ones who drink five or more drinks at a sitting, who drink to get drunk, who participate in drinking games, whose drinking has caused problems in school and with friends. The problem is an "increase in intensity" as the Harvard study noted in comparing its 1999 figures with those from 1993. Drinking behavior is increasingly polarized on the country's campuses: Though more students are abstaining, more who do drink are drinking to excess.

And drinking to excess is risky business. Students who have pushed themselves to be the best in all their endeavors, from academic to athletic, seem to consider alcohol another extreme competition. Witness 21 for 21 (drinking 21 shots on a 21st birthday), the Century Club (consuming 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes) and beer bonging and funneling (drinking from a large funnel that contains a six-pack or more of beer). Adding to the danger, hard alcohol shots and potent mixed concoctions are as popular as beer.

Risky business

It's another Thursday night, and this time I'm chatting with students inside the bars. "What have you had to drink?" I ask a slip of a girl who says her name is Em. "Two shots of gin, two Long Island iced teas and something else--I'm not sure what it was--a drink with Jack Daniel's in it," she says with a slow grin, eyes heavy-lidded. It's "cool," says another student, to buy your friend a shot. It's not cool, she adds, if you don't drink the shots you're given.

"Didn't David's death change how much you drink?" I ask at another table. "No," is the consensus. "He was stupid," says a young man called Samson. "He should have started drinking earlier in the day."

"Do you worry about how much you drink?" I ask him. "No," he says. "If you drink a lot and you always wake up perfectly fine in your bed the next day, you'll keep doing it."

Unfortunately, not all high-risk drinkers wake up the next day in their own beds, perfectly fine. The near misses just aren't as well publicized as David's death. Gretchen Peralta, emergency room nurse at Sutter Davis Hospital, says that each month they see roughly four to eight alcohol poisoning victims, ages 14 to 22. What scares her are the ones who aren't brought in, the ones whose friends are afraid that police or parents will be notified, who are more afraid of getting themselves or their friend in trouble than they are about their friend dying. (The hospital, she notes, doesn't notify the police, nor always the parents of people over 18.)

And then there are all the additional risks that accompany excessive drinking. Twenty-six percent of the UC Davis students responding to the American College Health Association survey said that during the past year they had done something they had regretted while drinking. Fourteen percent had unplanned sex. Sixteen percent had fallen behind in their school work. During the preceding 30 days, 19 percent said they had driven after drinking. Add to that date rape, injuries, fights and encounters with the law. Across the country, alcohol-related arrests on college campuses recently went up more than 24 percent.

The drive to drink

What's behind the extreme behavior--besides the usual invincibility felt by young people?

The UC Davis survey explored some reasons. Popular responses included "to have more fun," because "there's nothing else to do," "to feel more confident socially and sexually." The highest-rated response was "to feel more relaxed." The college years are a challenging period in a person's life, and on this highly competitive campus, stress is common. Roughly half of the students seen at the campus's Counseling Center are there for anxiety, says Associate Director Emil Rodolfa. Some students turn to alcohol to cope.

Peer pressure also plays a role. "Student focus groups have told me that it's not just acceptable to drink; it's expected," says Rodolfa. That's not surprising, given alcohol's prevalence in American society; students are not immune to a culture that makes alcohol a part of every celebration.

And then there are other forces of which students are probably unaware. Overindulgence on the 21st birthday "is a classic rite of passage," points out Carol Wall, vice chancellor for student affairs who's an anthropologist by training. "Rites of passage around the world always flirt with danger. It wouldn't be a rite if it were mundane."

So what can a campus do?

Wall believes the university has a dual responsibility: to those who don't drink, to reinforce that practice and provide alternative activities; and to those who drink to excess, to educate them and their friends about the risks they face.

Efforts on all fronts

Even before David's death, the campus had a solid core of programs to promote safe drinking behavior and was already beginning to strengthen those efforts.

"As we watched the MIT death and the Louisiana State death and the Michigan State death, we knew it could happen here," says Wall. "I thought we had a responsibility to make sure we were doing all that we could be doing."

Already in place was the Campus Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Prevention Program (CADAPP), a unit of Cowell Student Health Center. The program works closely with housing, judicial affairs and faculty members, serving as an educational resource and a treatment referral service. Central to the program, students are trained to be peer educators on health issues for student groups, including athletic teams, Greek chapters and student housing residents. They also hold hour-and-a-half workshop sessions for students who have violated campus alcohol policies.

The Counseling Center provides short-term and referral services by professional and peer counselors for students with problems, including substance abuse.

ASUCD offers its Tipsy Taxi fleet to reduce drunk driving and offers special programs throughout the year including guest speakers and a safety week.

The athletic department prohibits alcohol at all athletic-sponsored activities (which means, for traveling teams, from the time they leave campus until the time they return). Each year the department sponsors a workshop on alcohol and other drugs for all student athletes and, this year, for coaches, too. And Peer Counselors in Athletics--CADAPP-trained athletes and trainers-- regularly provide educational programs for athletic teams and campus groups.

The campus has very high expectations of its student-athletes, says Athletic Director Greg Warzecka, and students who do not live up to those expectations can be suspended. (That occurred this summer when the football team's quarterback and a linebacker were arrested on alcohol-related charges, including reportedly approaching a couple in downtown Davis and demanding a $5 donation to the football team. They were suspended while charges were investigated by Student Judicial Affairs, which subsequently imposed alcohol abuse counseling and community service.)

These existing campus efforts were augmented in 1998, with the formation of an Alcohol and Other Drug Task Force that offered several recommendations for additional ways to reduce problems caused by the use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs among UC Davis students. One recommendation was to provide alcohol-free alternative events. The first of those, called Turbulence, was held at the beginning of 1999's fall quarter. It attracted about 3,500 students with activities like sports, dancing and games. ASUCD is taking over sponsorship of the event and will offer it again this fall.

A recommendation to intervene earlier in cases of alcohol policy violations in student housing--where no underage drinking is allowed--was implemented this year. Now, with the first violation, a student must participate in one of the workshop sessions offered by CAADAP. Under leadership of the CADAPP student coordinator, a group of five to 10 students who have violated alcohol policy discusses decision-making skills and the definition and effects of high-risk drinking and considers various scenarios and consequences. The goal is to give the students information so they can make informed decisions, says Stephanie Lake, CADAPP staff coordinator. The campus attempts to strike a balance between education, its primary responsibility, and the safety of individuals and the community, so emphasis is placed on helping students understand the consequence of their actions, not just on punishment. Some 250 students went through the education effort this past year for violations like having beer in their rooms or walking through the common area with a drink.

A second violation results in an individual meeting with Lake, who will assess the problem and perhaps refer the student for additional education or counseling. Another violation can result in the student's removal from student housing.

Students who repeatedly violate housing policy (and this is usually for a mix of reasons) and those with more serious violations --for example, throwing keg parties in their rooms--will be sent to the student judicial affairs officer in Student Housing. These offenders may be placed on probation, with conditions placed upon their student standing, and they may be asked to do community service or a writing project related to their offense. By spring, when enough time has passed for students to have racked up more than one violation, the judicial affairs officer is busy. But the strengthened policies have been successful: The number of repeat alcohol offenses has decreased by one-third.

Also new this year, the result of an amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act passed by Congress in 1998, campuses are allowed to phone parents to notify them of drug and alcohol offenses. UC Davis contacts parents when there are serious concerns about a student's health and safety or the welfare of the people around that student. When a student from a residence hall ends up hospitalized for alcohol poisoning--and that happened some 10 times this past academic year, including one only a week after David died--parents will be called.

The task force also recommended a more active role in educational programs for Greek organizations, where studies have repeatedly shown that drinking behavior is more extreme. The recent Harvard study found that nationally 40 percent of Greek members were frequent binge drinkers.

With funding from a grant being administered by the campus's violence prevention unit, a Greek Awareness Program was started this past year. Under the program, fraternity and sorority members are trained in a for-credit class on issues like drugs, alcohol and sexual assault. Beginning this fall they will share what they've learned through presentations to the Greek chapters.

That won't be the only change this year in the Greek system. Nationally, fraternal organizations are starting to go dry. Sororities have long prohibited alcohol at their facilities, but now some fraternities, too, are seeing the benefits of a dry house. The movement began when Phi Delta Theta realized that it could control its insurance costs and attract more academically oriented members by restricting alcohol; chapters were required to be dry by July 1. (In a sad irony, David Thornton was a member of the campus's Phi Delta Theta chapter, though his drinking death was not related to a fraternity event.)

Nationally Phi Delta Theta recruited sorority support of the effort, prompting the National Panhellenic Conference--the governing body for 26 national sororities--to pass a resolution supporting alcohol-free housing. In turn, individual sororities are each deciding how to put that support into practice. The Davis Collegiate Panhellenic Association and its member sororities have adopted a resolution supporting alcohol-free housing by refusing to co-sponsor fraternity events that include alcohol.

Phi Delta Theta has seen its membership increase in many chapters throughout the country in response, says Paul Cody, UC Davis' staff liaison with Greek organizations. "I think in some respects we've been losing some of the best and brightest students out there who may be interested in the possibilities a fraternity or sorority can afford them but see alcohol as a barrier and are not interested," says Cody. Now other fraternities are following Phi DeltaTheta's lead.

"It's going to take a while to get used to [the new policy]," says Amy Wilson, UC Davis Panhellenic president who has been working with Cody to establish the new Greek Awareness Program. "But I think it will be successful, and it will be a good thing." Wilson has also been a participant on the Greek Conduct Board, the judicial branch of the Greek system that doles out sanctions for Greek misconduct; she notes, "You can trace almost every single problem back to alcohol. Alcohol might not have been the source of the problem, but alcohol was almost always there."

Indeed, two UC Davis fraternities are currently on probation for reasons related to alcohol, which--though not the primary cause--played a role in the hazing and fighting incidents that led to the disciplinary actions.

What works?

It's long been clear what doesn't work in terms of promoting safe drinking: Zero-tolerance campaigns, scare tactics and "just say no" approaches are not effective among a population that doesn't want to be told what to do. More effective is a "social norming" campaign, an approach that simply shares accurate information about the normal use of alcohol by college students--applying a little reverse peer pressure, if you will. The University of Arizona is among a number of campuses that have successfully tried this approach. That campus used posters to let students know that the vast majority of U of A students had four or fewer drinks when they partied. During the four-year project, the campus saw a 29 percent decrease in heavy drinking.

That approach should work particularly well on the Davis campus, where students believe drinking behavior to be far more extreme than it actually is. The American College Health survey found the reality is that 37 percent of students never drank or had not had a drink in the past month, but, when asked about their peers, students said they thought only 3 percent didn't drink or hadn't drunk in the past month. While only 18 percent drink five or more drinks typi-cally when they party, students thought that 46 percent typically did.

Vice Chancellor Wall says she is hopeful that a social norming campaign will give the majority of students "support for the decision they are making about being responsible in their drinking or choosing not to drink."

David's death, a catalyst

David Thornton's death was the impetus to add new campaigns to already-existing efforts--new initiatives to communicate very directly and immediately with students about the danger of alcohol poisoning. In a "Be a Friend" campaign, information about alcohol poisoning and what to do to help a friend is being given to students on wallet-sized cards and printed on posters that will be displayed around campus and in the community. Starting this fall, students turning 21 will receive an electronic birthday card signed by David's parents and friends, reminding recipients to celebrate responsibly. This campaign is patterned after a successful effort at Michigan State, which began mailing cards to students after the drinking death of student Brad McCue.

David's death has also prompted more immediate action on a task force recommendation that the campus begin working more closely with the community on alcohol issues. Michelle Famula, director of the Cowell Student Health Center, and Counseling Center Associate Director Rodolfa are heading up an effort to bring together campus and community leaders on a regular basis to identify some ways that a joint effort can make a difference.

"David's death was a catalyst for the campus and community effort," says Famula."He was a member of the campus family, and he died in the community. He was a member of a campus organization, a fraternity, and he chose to do his last drinking at a community establishment and went to the community's hospital. It was a very vivid picture that we aren't separate. We can't fix it in one place and expect it to work if we don't fix it in the other place."

Involved in the campus/community group are representatives from the public schools, the city and county, law enforcement, apartment complexes and drinking establishments.

Charlie Swanson, general manager of the Graduate (which is still a popular college spot, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights) is one member of the committee. "I think it's the right thing to do," he says of his involvement. "I have some expertise in the area, and I want to try and share it with people who have some clout and maybe make some changes for the better."

The Graduate has already taken steps to make things better. Its over-18 night gives underage students a nondrinking activity once a week. And the establishment has done away with cards it once handed out to birthday celebrants that had spaces to note the number and type of drinks consumed. "We don't want people to feel like it's a contest," says Swanson.

The group, which just began its work this summer, will be considering education and policy projects, hoping to make headway by the end of the academic year on two or three efforts that will have an impact.

More to do

More is still in the planning stages. Vice Chancellor Wall hopes to persuade faculty members to include alcohol issues in their curriculum, in classes, for example, in nutrition, physical education, human sexuality, chemistry and biological science.

She also hopes that the campus can eventually offer workshops for parents--faculty, staff and students who have children of all ages.

"Probably the most important point to make is that students come to us knowing how to drink already," says Wall. "It's not just that they are away from home for the first time. They are experienced drinkers. So parents need to talk to their children and help them understand how to drink responsibly--to let them know that if they choose not to drink, good. But if they do choose to drink, do so responsibly."

By the end of our run, our Tipsy Taxi--one of three vans operating that night--had given a ride to more than 50 people, in what was a fairly slow night for the service. Some nights, five vans are in operation, carrying more than 400 people during their five-hour shift. It's a service that is not without its detractors, including the 1998 alcohol task force, which noted that the service creates the impression that ASUCD facilitates high-risk drinking.

Janet, like all Tipsy Taxi drivers, is a Unitrans employee. Despite the occasional obnoxious or sick drunk, "I love doing this job," she tells me as we make our rounds. "Some people have the idea that if we don't drive students, they won't drink. That won't happen. But even if we can't tell them what's right and wrong, we can get them home in one piece."