Alcohol abuse endangers students

Friday, November 20, 1998

Alcohol abuse endangers students

DORMS: Administrators start awareness programs to halt drinking
problems

By Dennis Lim

Daily Bruin Contributor

Four weeks into her first quarter at UCLA Jesstine Guzman had
already learned her first lesson with alcohol: don’t drink too much
of it.

Slumped over a toilet, vomiting her dinner into the now-murky
brown water, Guzman, a first-year undeclared student, had
overwhelmed her body with so much alcohol she could barely stand.
Her body reacted in a punishing way.

"Before we went to the party we had a little pre-party which
involved alcohol, then when we got to the party we continued to
drink in massive amounts," Guzman said.

"We stayed there for a couple hours and from the minute I walked
into the party until the minute I left, I had a drink in my hand.
By the end of the night, we all ended up back in the dorms
throwing-up," she added.

Guzman’s story, however, is not unique to herself or other
students who live in the dorms.

Figures provided by Jack Gibbons, the associate director of the
Office of Residential Life (ORL), show that in 1995 and 1996,
alcohol-related incidences stayed constant at 73 during fall
quarter, but increased to 89 last fall.

While figures for this quarter have not been released, those
within the dorms predict this trend will continue.

"I’ve been in the dorms for three years, and I have never seen
it this bad before," said Mark Jaramillo, a third-year Program
Assistant in Sproul Hall.

"Across the board, on every floor and every residence hall,
we’re seeing an increase in the number of incidences and the
intensity of the incidences as well," he said.

On Jaramillo’s floor alone, there have been two incidents,
including one case of severe alcohol poisoning that led to the
hospitalization of a student.

Jaramillo credits the rise in alcohol-related incidents to the
large number of students coming to the dorms with little or no
experience with alcohol.

"I’ve seen people who have never had a drink before and don’t
know their limit, (they) drink so much that their bodies (can’t)
handle it anymore," he said.

"I think a lot of the freshmen don’t know that you can get
alcohol poisoning from drinking too much," he continued.

Mike Pham, a second-year biology student living in Sproul Hall,
confirmed Jaramillo’s observation.

"This year’s freshman class is really bad," Pham said. "They
don’t drink responsibly. They’re Kamikaze drinkers. They drink
until they can’t drink anymore."

"On the first day of move-in I remember seeing the freshmen on
my floor start drinking that night, just a couple hours after their
parents left," he added.

Gibbons, however, sees no indication that the figures for
alcohol-related incidents should increase this quarter.

"Obviously, the fall quarter is not yet completed, so there is
no basis for comparison," he said.

"The data has only been reported quarterly, not monthly. I don’t
have any information that would suggest a significant deviation
from past years."

ORL will release the completed figures for this year’s fall
quarter in January.

Official policy makes the possession of alcohol anywhere on
campus, including the dorms, illegal.

Students caught drinking or in possession of alcohol in the
dorms get sent to the Resident Director of their hall to determine
punishment, which can range from a couple hours of community
service to expulsion from the dorms.

To help prevent future alcohol-related incidences, ORL plans to
create more alcohol awareness programs to teach students about the
dangers of alcohol poisoning.

Alcohol awareness efforts currently include bulletin boards with
information on alcohol poisoning, movies addressing alcohol-related
problems and an alcohol-awareness week in October.

First-year geography student Keith Wright, another dorm
resident, agreed this was the best way to prevent future
alcohol-related incidents.

"By the time students get to college, they’re old enough to know
about alcohol and what it does," Wright said.

"You can’t really convince them that it’s bad or not to drink,
but you can try and get them to drink responsibly," he said.

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