Meghan Harmening | Opinion Co-Editor

Over the past 3 months that have made up our fall semester, the amount of people who have gone to the hospital for alcohol related poisonings has exceeded the number of fingers on one hand. And it seems as though we’re still counting. After Student Senate put on a host of activities through B.E.E.R. Week, I thought, “Maybe we’ve finally got through to a few of them. Maybe we’ll see a decrease in the amount of people drinking excessively.”

I believe I was wrong. Maybe it’s just poor timing of writing this piece, but last week was Hell Week for those of you who don’t know. Last Saturday ended the Buena Vista University’s football season with a solid win for the Beavers. Last Saturday also marked the beginning of Hell Week – a week-long affair where part of the football team drinks alcohol every night of the week. Some drink just a little bit, while others go and get hammered every single night. Some even say they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t tradition.

So why is it tradition? Why is there a week-long activity on campus geared towards ruining our livers? Why do people think they’re invincible when it comes to drinking large amounts? We shouldn’t chalk it up to students being uninformed but rather to ignorance and naivety. Just the weekend before Hell Week, it was rumored that we had two students go to the hospital – one for alcohol poisoning and one for a potential drug overdose.

If just days before the football team was set to have Hell Week we had two students misuse alcohol and drugs, would that not be a wake-up call for those intending to do the same? I suppose, no one intends to get alcohol poisoning. However, many students on this campus do intend to misuse alcohol. It simply doesn’t make sense to me why someone would continually use alcohol as a way to mask their current problems.

A wake-up call is needed on this campus. Will it take a death before students realize that drinking in excess is extremely dangerous? I sincerely hope it doesn’t get that far, as that would be a terrible tragedy for a small campus such as ours to experience, but what will it take?

Yes, it’s college – the best four years of our lives, supposedly, but this doesn’t mean that we have to be drunk every weekend in order to have some good times. I encourage you to be aware of your drinking as you do so. Start designating a “parent” of the group to monitor the drinking of the group.

I am by no means telling our campus to cut drinking out of their lifestyles completely. I understand it’s simply going to be a part of our lives. However, it’s time to be responsible, and responsible we must be.

Photo by Tyson Domingo