Hazing to Hard Partying: Students Trade Life For Alcohol

Pledge practices at the Rider University chapter of Phi Kappa Tau resemble many tactics employed by fraternities across the nation including, sadly, those used at our own school. After weeks of push-up and sit-up drills and scavenger hunts through the inner-city areas of New York and Philadelphia, pledge-masters at PKT felt it was time for their sniveling wannabes to prove their manhood by sitting together alone in the woods-a bunch of guys alone in the woods-and drink a full bottle of hard-liquor each.

Gary DeVercelly, Jr., 18, of Long Beach, CA, was a PKT pledge on the day the decision was made. He downed enough of his bottle to raise his blood-alcohol level to a horrifying 0.426, more than five times the legal driving limit. His parents suffered through a truly dreadful red-eye from California to New Jersey to spend time with their son in his final hours.

He was on life-support before they arrived. The decision was made to remove the ventilator the next morning at 10:50 a.m.

These stories dominate our perception of college alcoholism, like accounts of exploding car-bombs in Mesopotamia dominate our perception of war. They grab the headlines, so to speak and prevent us from devoting full attention to any related issue less sensational.

Are the veterans who escaped death being adequately cared for when they return home?

How did we fail to ask such an obvious question, one which could have possibly prevented the disaster of the Walter Reed Medical Center?

What happened to the other pledge in that hazing story, the one who made it home from the hospital?

The consequences of alcohol abuse short of fatality by poisoning are vast, various and in many cases, equally saddening. In certain instances, alcohol doesn't cause precipitous death, but hastens it considerably. Often, the results of debilitating alcohol abuse go unnoticed and untreated until it is too late.

How we define "debilitating alcohol abuse" determines our level of vigilance. For the common college-aged drinker, alcohol is perceived as a problem when it causes fist-fights or sends someone to the hospital. The problems for more experienced drinkers are harrowing, involving the inevitable long-term effects of alcohol abuse: liver disease (more than 2 million American suffer from alcohol-related liver disease), heart disease, different forms of cancer and alcoholic hepatitis.

The problems of alcohol abuse extended beyond physical ailments are also well-chronicled. Drinkers are more likely to: argue with and separate from significant others, encounter legal problems that would have otherwise been avoided, be the victim or perpetrator of violence, lose employment, etc.

Equally troubling are the unspoken consequences of alcohol abuse-consequences our society ignores because so many people suffer from them. Alcohol abuse prevents people from fulfilling their potential in life, from achieving the career goals they'd otherwise be fully capable of, from finding true love and happiness, from appreciating the glorious natural world, from early fishing trips with dad, from remembering our best friend's weddings, from listening carefully to loved ones and making a difference in their lives. Essentially, the drinker trades life's most precious gifts for hangovers.

If we, as a society, put the bottle down, would we more quickly find a cure for cancer and AIDS? Would our relationships be stronger? Our families more united? Our dreams fulfilled?

Put the bottle down in front of you and look at it closely. Is it worth it?

New Paltz Oracle