All five were taken to jail for what could have been a very close call, a potentially deadly one, police said.
Police say that the 16-year-old boy was drinking Fireball Whiskey inside Anderson Hall with his sister, Chandi Wilson, and four other Georgetown College students early Sunday.
All five are charged with second degree wanton endangerment and unlawful transaction with a minor third. Charges against one of the students were dismissed.
Officers say they were with the teen when he downed a fifth of whiskey and was so drunk his alcohol level was three times the legal limit. But somehow he managed to call 911. That's a good thing, police say, because if he didn't, he may have died. Officers say they got to him just in time.
"They found the juvenile there at the scene, highly intoxicated and he had vomited all over himself. And immediately, medical attention was given to him, said Lt. Jason Whitaker.
Police say all involved are underage and should not have been drinking.
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Um, folks? A 0.195 is not three times the legal limit. He was drinking under age: the legal limit for that is zero.
ReplyDeleteSomething I learned in college is that, if there's anything I hate, it's someone with a big vomit streak down their front. How refreshing that the four idiots who helped him do this are now learning what "responsibility" means, for a great and radical change.
Baptist? Georgetown is a Catholic university run by Jesuits.
ReplyDeletePoor dumb kid. Good thing he called 911. What a merry Christmas that family's going to have.
You're probably thinking of Georgetown University in DC. This is an older college in Kentucky.
DeleteI was initially confused, too, and then remembered that there's a Georgetown, KY.
DeleteOf course, Georgetown U students are pretty well known for their drinking, too (and bars in the neighborhood used to serve 16-year-olds on a regular basis; of course, that was when the drinking age was 18. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, there was a time when the drinking age was lower in D.C. than in Virginia, or at least the rules more laxly enforced. That led to some real carnage on the GW Parkway, a beautiful but ill-lit and winding road bounded by low stone walls perfect for crashing into, flipping over, etc., etc.).
I'm generally inclined to think that a good many of the non-academic problems on college campuses(and probably some of the academic ones, too) would be solved if we lowered the drinking age back to 18, and tried hard to teach students about responsible drinking (including the dangers of binge drinking, what levels of intoxication are medically dangerous, etc., etc.) I've even wondered whether the drinking age should be 16 (but combined with a strictly-enforced 0.0 blood alcohol level for driving up to age 21, or even higher).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether this episode argues for or against that kind of change. It strikes me as pretty clear that the problem is not underage drinking per se, but the practice of binge drinking, which may actually be exacerbated by the need for secrecy, and the "forbidden fruit" factor, created by the 21-year-old drinking age. Or maybe we should blame the problem on undeveloped brains (in which case we probably need a drinking age of 25 or so for women, and 30 or so for men, which really isn't going to fly).
In any case, I'm very glad that this particular kid got to a hospital in time, and didn't get behind the wheel of a car. Too many don't (and/or do).
I taught at Georgetown a few years. I sent the link to Terry originally, though others may have as well.
ReplyDeleteThe kids there are fantastically nice and gentle souls. Truly. In my time there incidents like this were extraordinarily rare. It's the most well-behaved campus I'd ever spent time on. I still have great friends at the college and they have all been shaken by this event.
I'm just 2 hours away from there. Georgetown has some terrific NAIA sports teams, and I was on their campus twice (2001 and 2009) for a rather cool conference about the humanities, blah blah blah.
ReplyDeleteAnd one of our newer faculty members (some science; who remembers) did undergrad work there and raved about it.
So, good kids, bad kids, church school, whatever, they are still pounding Fireball and coming close to death. Ridiculous for me to be so judgmental because I was a lousy 19 year old myself. But it does make me grateful that I survived the madness, and makes me all the more aware of what all of our students face in terms of their drinking culture on campus.
My bad. And I'm touched by all your thoughtful and positive responses to this story. Where are our trolls, who think we're all uncaring whiners?
ReplyDeleteI think a reduction in legal drinking age should not be accompanied by a reduction in legal purchase age. I confess that this is wholly a proposition about social engineering.
ReplyDeleteModelling reasonable consumption, along with the education that Cassandra suggests, and removing some of the allure of the forbidden (fermented) fruit seems to be a good way to go. I think that allowing parents or guardians to serve their sub-21 children goes in that direction. You want a beer? Sure, grab me one too. You want another? Nah, I've had enough, and that means so have you.
Many states in the US and many countries allow for this. Although my family resided in a state that set the drinking age equal to the purchase age, my parents practiced the European approach that their kids could have an age-appropriate amount of wine and/or beer with the evening meal, or during particularly strenuous chores for which beer and "beer muscles" enhanced the experience in myriad ways.
When I went off to college, I was already quite aware of my limits, having been eased into them.