Patricia

Department of English


“Binge Drinking, A Campus Killer” by Sabina Rubin Erdely


Excessive and underage drinking is a problem on nearly all college campuses and communities. On average, every year 1,700 college students die from alcohol-related accidents; 599,000 are injured while under the influence of alcohol; 696,000 students are assaulted by another student who is been drinking;97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape; 110,000 are arrested for alcohol-related violations and 2,100,000 are driving while intoxicated. “Binge Drinking, A Campus Killer” is written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely who is an award-winning investigative journalist based in Philadelphia. She is Senior Writer at Philadelphia magazine, where she has been on staff since 1995. In this essaythe author is giving us many examples of the live that many college students are having and how drinking is a big part of their college experience. Sabrina provides us with some cases where college students have paid with their lives after a night of excessive drinking and partying. She also explains how binge drinking has becomes some kind of cool factor or essential thing to do while livingyour college years. For some of today’s college students, binge drinking has become the nom.

Cause and Effect of College Binge Drinking

As young people enter the culture of the college campus, they are confronted with many challenges and opportunities: the opportunity to be independent of parental control; the need to conform; and the insecurity of a new social setting. While national surveyshave documented a significant decline in the use of other drugs by high school seniors and college-age youths, there have been only modest declines in the numbers reporting binge drinking. Teenagers and young adults drink alcoholic beverages at about the same rates they did five years ago. Binge drinking increases the risk for alcohol-related injury, especially for young people, who often combinealcohol with other high risk activities, such as impaired driving. The four leading injury-related causes of death among youths under the age of 20 are motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and drowning. Alcohol is involved in many of these deaths. Sexual encounters with their inherent risks of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV exposure, as well as date rape and otherviolence, can and do occur more frequently while students are consuming large amounts of alcohol by binge drinking.

Binge drinking, or the partying lifestyle of young people, may be related to an environment that appears to support heavy drinking. Youths report that alcohol is more easily available to them today than it was five years ago, and there is a high correlation between availability and use.The national binge drinking rate among college students is 42.7 percent, according to a Harvard study stated Diane Carroll (3D). One of the more troubling statistics is that binge drinking seems to be more prevalent in high school students notes Linda Mei (51-53). Linda Mei also stated that If they were binge drinkers in high school, they were three times more likely to binge in college (51-53).One of the impacts is the promotional advertising that is targeted to the college age audience which has been under much criticism of activists seeking to prevent underage drinking. One of the biggest clashes over alcohol advertising last year involved a "Back to School" catalog by college-oriented retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, which included a section entitled "Drinking 101" that featureddrinking games and recipes. Critics said the catalog encouraged binge drinking and underage drinking (since most college students are under the legal drinking age), and the company eventually pulled the offending sections from the catalog (1-5). Beer companies are especially active in promoting to college students. Student newspapers and campus bulletin boards boast ads for happy hours with price...