Whether it has been a motivational speaker or online modules, most college students at ASU have been through alcohol ed. This usually follows the tone of “take your friend home if he or she is too drunk, don’t let them out of your sight, and know the signs of alcohol poisoning or when to call 911. While these are all very helpful tips, I believe alcohol education needs to be centered on self-accountability. Too often, college students exceed their limit and that’s where the issues of safety begin to arise. It seems like every week, an entire organization is sanctioned for hosting a party that an individual willingly drinks too much at. If you drink so much you need to be hospitalized, that is a personal issue, not the issue of the organization. It is your responsibility to get your drinking under control.
Now, let’s define the limit. The limit is when drinking is no longer fun anymore. You’re not feeling in control and have continued to drink even after you reached a good level. You’re heading for the blackout stage and are more likely to do something irrational, pass out and or throw up from drinking.
I want you to ask yourself these questions and answer honestly:
-Do you make sure to eat before a night of drinking?
-Do you keep count of roughly how many drinks you’ve had?
-Do you know your limit?
-Do you stop drinking when you’ve reached your limit?
-Do you know how long it takes for you to start feeling the effects of alcohol and take this into consideration when drinking by pacing yourself?
If ASU students did these things, we wouldn’t have people hospitalized at practically every event (and probably a lot more fraternities left standing). It’s become a huge issue.
Now, I’m going to single out the women. It’s important to understand we are more susceptible to alcohol poisoning, so we need to take additional measures to prevent this. Women, specifically sorority women, hold the power to alleviate alcoholism in Greek life. If the top sorority set a classy standard of responsible drinking and didn’t party all the time and drink before every social event, then the other sororities would follow in an effort to be top house. And once all the sororities aren’t acting this way, then fraternities will follow.
So as women, this is one of the rare times the power to change is in our hands. It all comes back to self-accountability. If we own up to our drinking habits and strive to change, the campus will follow and ASU will become a much safer place.
