’Tis the season for raising holiday spirits, but evidently, a few University of Vermont students raised them a bit too often this weekend — even before the party officially started.
The Vermont State Police reported that at about 7:30 Saturday night, three female UVM students headed to a sorority function at the Old Lantern in Charlotte had to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington due to overintoxication. According to police, the women, who were all headed to the winter formal sponsored by UVM’s Delta Delta Delta sorority chapter, arrived by bus and hadn’t even entered the party before they got sick.
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UVM has always been a hard drinking school. This is less a “troubling trend” than business as usual. The State should lower the drinking age back to 18, then young adults could do their drinking legally in bars instead of in basements. Yes, Burlington’s student neighborhoods actually have several basements converted into adhoc bars each school year. Just check with BPD about the enormous house parties they break up each year.
Why is it found necessary to state that half of those in detox were women? Just as many of those put in detox were males. Is it the actions of these young adults that are the actions frowned upon or the fact that they are women drinking?
It’s relevant here because they were transported from a sorority function (before it began), and even more relevant because it’s important that the narrative about college drinking applies equally to both sexes so people don’t assume (one way or another) about one sex being any more or less likely to partake
Thinking that people are “pre-gaming” for utilitarian reasons (to save money/not get date raped) is a pretty good indication that UVM has absolutely no idea what they are doing when it comes to proactively addressing the drinking habits of their student body. “I wanna save money and be safe, better get blackout drunk in the dorm at 7pm.” ???
One would think that the main reason for an under 21 college student to drink before the formal dance is because she will not be able to drink at the dance. I wish more people understood that the 21 drinking age doesn’t stop anyone from drinking-in fact it has only moved drinking from bars and restaurants into homes and neighborhoods. Instead of 18 year olds drinking and learning to do so responsibly, we’ve taught them how to obtain the alcohol furtively, consume it in secret and then go out to socialize.
You’d think that in a state with tens of thousands of adults who are assumed to be incapable of making their own choices that politicians would emerge who could find success by restoring their freedoms, but you’d be wrong.
Maybe more to the point, the UVM official quoted in the story specifically described a “trend” among women in particular. I don’t know whether the data provided by police services is granular enough to crosscount gender and time of admission to directly address that statement, but regardless the article should’ve raised the question for clarity’s sake.
The story also missed another point here about gender in the college drinking narrative, leaving you with a very reasonably mistaken impression. Given UVM’s (roughly, so take it easy on me, commentariat) 45/55 male/female ratio, the even split in detox cases actually suggests that men may be generally more inclined than women to practice dangerous drinking behaviors.
Yea this isn’t really news and this isn’t a trend. This is straight up standard fare underage college etiquette. I’m not saying it’s not negative but this happened so frequently when I was at UVM 05-09 that 7D never would have bothered considering writing about it.