Impaired judgement

Part 2 - College Enemy No. 1

by Jason Gay

Though some may overstate the case, there's little doubt that alcohol represents an enormous problem on campus. A 1994 Harvard study found that 44 percent of American college students were "binge drinkers" -- meaning that within the two weeks prior to the survey, they had consumed four or five drinks consecutively over the course of an evening.

The fallout from such binging is immense. More than any other factor, alcohol contributes to student motor vehicle accidents, injuries, unsafe sex, unwanted sexual advances, and rape -- not to mention poor academic performance.

"It's a public-health issue, definitely," says Henry Wechsler, the Harvard School of Public Health lecturer who wrote the binge drinking study.

Occasionally, a student dies. In late August, Louisiana State University student Benjamin Wynne died of acute alcohol poisoning after consuming at least 25 drinks in a night of partying. His blood alcohol content (BAC) had reached a startling .60 percent. A few weeks later, five students died in a house fire at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Four were presumed to have been too drunk to escape.

UMass/Amherst junior Adam Prentice died of massive bleeding after falling through the glass roof of a greenhouse on September 27. A few days later, Prentice was determined to have been intoxicated when he fell.

But Scott Krueger's death, two days later hit the hardest. Krueger, a handsome, fair-haired MIT freshman from a Buffalo suburb, died of alcohol poisoning two days after collapsing during an event at the Phi Gamma Delta ("Fiji") fraternity, in the Fenway. His BAC was determined to have reached .41 percent, a level that can be achieved by consuming 16 beers or shots of liquor within one hour.

It's unclear whether Krueger was drinking on his own terms, or as part of a fraternity ritual. (A police investigation is ongoing; investigators have not ruled out bringing criminal charges against Fiji members, or MIT itself.)

Whatever the circumstances, the sudden loss of a bright student in his first month of college -- at one of the world's finest universities -- sent shock waves throughout Boston and the rest of the nation. You couldn't pick up a newspaper or turn on a television newscast without seeing Krueger's yearbook photo.

Prentice's drinking-related death at UMass stoked the local furor. Cellucci instructed members of the state's board of higher education to implement a zero-tolerance policy to combat underage drinking at other public colleges and universities -- or jeopardize their reappointment. (Not surprisingly, the board quickly passed the governor's recommendation.) Attorney General Scott Harshbarger filed a bill aimed at increasing penalties for underage drinking and buying alcohol for minors. The Boston City Council held its own meeting with representatives of various local colleges on October 9.

Local police, who traditionally step up drinking patrols when students return in September, promised even more vigilance. On October 13, the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC), joined by Cambridge and campus police, used a sting to bust an underage MIT fraternity member. His crime? Using a fake identification card to purchase a keg of beer.

The keg bust was breathlessly reported as the lead story on the six o'clock news that night. There was Consumer Affairs director Duffy -- who oversees the ABCC -- grimly talking about the confiscated keg as if it were an IRA arms cache. The next day, the Boston Herald trumpeted Duffy's seizure with a front-page story and a banner headline: KEG OF TROUBLE.

Back to part 1 - On to part 3

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.