St. Lawrence Then and Now: Alcohol Use Continues to Cause Trouble on Campus

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Charlie Reetz

“I was thoroughly shitfaced last night,” a St. Lawrence junior, who asked to remain anonymous, recently recalled with a guilty smile. “We pre-gamed over at Whitman, played card games and ripped about five shots of Barton’s (vodka), ‘cause it’s cheap and gets the job done. Then we walked to a (SLU) party off campus. I played like five or six games of Beirut and had a couple of beers in between. Headed to the Tick Tock around midnight. This is where things get patchy. I danced a bunch and think I made out with a rando’ in the back bar! The night was a blast, but details are tough to remember. No idea how I got home but I woke up in my bed at noon, fully clothed, shoes and all. I could probably tell you more after brunch, that’s when everybody sort of pieces things together.”
Stories like this abound at SLU and few of us give them much thought.
We tend to forget that drinking and drugs can endanger and even kill people.
Forget that just a few weeks ago, a heat lamp being used to grow marijuana fell over and started a small fire.
Forget that two weeks ago excessive alcohol use by three SLU students caused them to be transported to the hospital.
Forget about the story of Adam Falcon.
According to police reports and an interview with Canton Police Chief Alan Mulkin, on Nov. 13, 2004, Falcon, a 20-year-old junior SLU student and soccer player, drank with some friends at Dean Eaton. By the time he left to attend a party at the Java House, friends said he was intoxicated. After spending some time at Java, he decided to brave the cold and trek to the Tick Tock. According to a police report, Falcon used a 22-year-old friend’s driver’s license to buy drinks at the bar, and he was seen leaving there at 2 a.m. 
Five days later, Falcon’s partially unclothed body was found by the St. Lawrence County Dive Team in an eddy in the Grasse River.
“Falcon left the bar and walked towards Chapel Street, where his hat was found,” Mulkin said, “From there, we believe he fell asleep on the porch of the rectory (Nun’s house), where we discovered his cell phone. Given how cold it was, Falcon probably contracted hypothermia. People with hypothermia often wake up feeling like their body is on fire . . . it’s not uncommon for them to rip off clothing and seek what they believe to be relief.”
An autopsy determined that Falcon’s blood alcohol level when he died was .21, well above .08, which is the legal limit for driving. 
The Canton police report said the cause of death “was determined to be asphyxia due to drowning with a clinical history being consistent with hypothermia.” The death was ruled accidental.
The Falcon case serves as a powerful reminder of why college presidents and administrators take the issue of heavy drinking so seriously.
Falcon is one of 13 student deaths linked to heavy drinking that St. Lawrence President Dan Sullivan has dealt with during his career as administrator and president at several colleges.
Unfortunately, the issue is not going away for William Fox, who succeeds Sullivan this summer and is currently president of Culver-Stockton College, which prohibits the use or possession of alcohol on campus. 
Collegiate alcohol abuse is widely recognized as a national problem, and it’s received much scrutiny at SLU. “Alcohol is a problem everywhere,” Dean of Student Life Joe Tolliver said. “When I worked at Haverford College, we had about 18 transports for alcohol-related issues each year. SLU has double the student population of Haverford and had exactly double (36) the amount of transports last year (the highest total since 2005). Each school thinks they are the worst, but it’s not an institutional problem, it’s a higher educational problem.”
However, institutional research shows that SLU students are more likely to consume alcohol, and do so more heavily than students at many other colleges and universities.
For instance, a 2006 survey found that about 90 percent of SLU students drink, compared to a national norm of 81 percent. 
General alcohol use can be a problem, but the negative secondary effects associated with binge drinking (consuming five or more drinks in a row for a man and four or more for a woman) “are the largest concern about SLU’s alcohol consumption,” said Christine Zimmerman, director of institutional research at St. Lawrence. According to research published in 2000, 44 percent of students nationally admitted to binge drinking in the past two weeks. In 2006, an institutional survey found that this behavior held true for 68 percent of SLU’s student body. 
When compared to SLU’s associate colleges (Clarkson University, SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam), SLU students are again more likely to drink. For example, in 2006, 27 percent of students at associate colleges admitted to frequently drinking (3 times per week or more), compared to almost 35 percent at St. Lawrence. Zimmerman explained that multiple factors, including race and ethnicity, might be causing these differences. “Asians and African Americans are much less likely to drink,” she said, “and the associate colleges are more racially diverse than St. Lawrence.” 
Zimmerman emphasized that the findings should be viewed in context. While figures for SLU are higher than the national average, they are “similar to other small, northeastern, private, residential liberal arts schools.”
As SLU students are told repeatedly, heavy alcohol abuse poses many dangers. “Ninety percent of sexual violence stems from drinking, alcohol-related incidents are the number two leading cause of death among college students, and alcohol lowers the immune system,” said Patricia Ellis, director of health and counseling services.
Sullivan said he wished “we could have done more in my time here,” about alcohol abuse, even though his administration launched several initiatives.
While state and federal governments provide funding for alcohol prevention efforts, funding is based on advocating abstinence. Sullivan, however, believes “students only learn their limits by experimentation. They have to be able to test things. We would be far better served if this experimentation corresponded to educational guidance from parents or role models, rather than behind closed doors with little instillment of personal responsibility.”
In 2001, SLU introduced the Wellness Initiative, which focuses on overall student health with an emphasis on addressing high-risk alcohol use. The initiative sponsors four major student events: the First Year Cup, alcohol-free and low-risk alcohol events, AlcoholEdu, and free late-night breakfasts.
Last year, Sullivan also joined about 130 other college and university presidents in signing the Amethyst Initiative, which calls for more discussion about the legal drinking age. “Its purpose is not to lower the drinking age, but rather to discuss how effective the current laws have been,” Sullivan has said.
Fox said he didn’t sign the initiative “because of the policies and processes at Culver-Stockton, but not because I oppose it. If I’m faced with an opportunity to continue President Sullivan’s endorsement of the initiative, I would like to … because it advocates a national discussion, and not a particular policy.”
The initiative faces strong opposition, including the politically powerful group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which argues that lowering the drinking age from 21 would increase drunken driving. The group has even made public statements dissuading parents from sending their children to signatory schools.
Though Sullivan understands these roadblocks, he said the Amethyst Initiative is “where we need to go,” and he recognizes it as a distant solution for a current problem. 
In the meantime, Tolliver said, “We need to create more events that encourage moderation and teach responsible methods of drinking,” citing certain campus social events and the new “Pub 56” where students who are 21 and older would be able to drink with faculty. “Alcohol is so taboo right now, people drink because it’s forbidden,” he said.