The tragic end to Abel Bolanos' life highlights several problems we must address as students.
Binge drinking
Many of us have this idea that drinking massive amounts of alcohol is fun and socially acceptable. I used to think so, as a freshman and even after I returned from deployment as a much more mature individual. However, over the last year, I've learned binge drinking is the surest way to gamble with your future. Certainly, many college students escape unscathed, but binge drinking can lead to shattered relationships, bad decisions, expensive citations and reduced cognition as the effects of drinking too heavily. Chances are, like me, you've suffered a majority of these effects.
A divided community
Ames residents are constantly complaining about "drunken idiots" keeping them up at night, destroying public and private property and a plethora of other negative consequences. My neighbor, Fern Kupfer, professor of English, once wrote a guest column on the effect of student binge drinking on the rest of the community. She's told me ridiculous stories of students urinating in her lawn, destroying her private property and calling her disgusting names in front of her children.
Certainly Ames residents have a vendetta against us transient types, and it is somewhat stereotypical and unwarranted. Ames residents should also realize that we are the backbone of this community and it would not exist as anything more than a truck stop without us.
However, we have a responsibility to conduct ourselves as responsible, contributing citizens to civilization within Ames. Our reputation will not improve until we realize the destructive behavior of a few affects us all. We have the potential to be America's best and brightest. If we are to renew our reputation as the leaders of the future, we must police up our peers and make it socially unacceptable to act as immature teenagers every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
True Friendship
While we must stick together as the ISU student community, it is also imperative we stick together in our own cliques. Friends should be present through all hours of the night, whether alcohol is involved or not. Under the best case scenario, a friend may make a bad decision that results in regret, such as sleeping with a complete stranger without protection. Depending on the other individual involved, that friend could be wrongly charged with sexual assault because the other person changed their mind or doesn't remember what happened. Worst, that friend could stumble in front of the car of a drunk driver, or into Lake Laverne. What we really need are true friends — they need not be best friends, or even close friends. Drinking buddies should be watching out for each other, as they may need the favor returned some day.
Binge drinking is certainly the culprit in each of these cases. Alcohol can be fun, but it turns even the most responsible into people with the maturity and cognition of an elementary student. Students will continue to binge drink, but a "Designated Non-drinker" in each group of friends could help to alleviate problems — not only with drinking and driving — but with keeping their drunk friends under supervision when they cannot do so themselves.
The students who took away Bolanos' keys to ensure he did not drive drunk took a step in the right direction. However, they failed to follow through as true friends and as a result, he was allowed to take himself to his own demise because he lacked the capacity to act in a responsible or coherent manner.
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4 comments:
Gott's themes are simple:
1. ISU students who get drunk and stupid with tiresome regularity are unwelcome in their own backyards.
2. ISU students who get drunk and stupid with tiresome regularity endanger themselves and others.
3. ISU students who get drunk and stupid with tiresome regularity need and want non-drinking friends to babysit them.
Aaron Gott doesn't have the guts, creativity, or initiative to come up with better solutions for solving the "alcohol issues" that "surfaced with Bolanos's death?" And what a laugh! Nothing surfaced: these "alcohol issues" were anticipated by the community at large the moment it was learned that Bolanos was missing. (By the way, Gott, his surname's misspelled!)
Gott's lame suggestion that non-drinking friends should agree to be responsible for their impaired friends is a notion rejected, in principle, by the crowds of libertarian-minded students who spout endlessly about personal responsibility.
How about this for a way to solve the "alcohol issues?" Those grieving the death of Abel Bolanos should organize a campus-wide alcohol-free protest weekend to agitate against the drunk 'n stupid mentality that permeates ISU culture.
Why not fight back against the individuals, businesses, institutions, and power arrangements that depend on and promote heavy drinking amongst the student body? Why not demonstrate true friendship and solidarity by demanding an accounting for the student deaths, accidents, injuries, and damages caused by heavy alcohol consumption?
Ask yourself these questions as you contemplate the alcohol issues that contributed to the death of Abel Bolanos: who profited that Friday night? Who lost?
Meanwhile, the rest of the Ames community sits back and wonders at the unbelievable exercise in futility students go through as they try to find ways to justify their continued booze-binging behavior. They are simply following a well-worn path like overbred sheep, even though it leads to a precipice some of them are going to tumble over.
Come on, students--get over yourselves. Time to wake up and start talking about the negative effects of ISU's booze culture on you and your friends.
Hope to see some personal stories shared here.
AuntiCykosis,
Thank you for your response. Yes, my themes are simple. It doesn't make sense to talk about the complexities of the problems with binge drinking if we don't first understand the simple, underlying issues associated with it.
For example, many students dismiss the claim that they are harming themselves by drinking regularly and endlessly. They also think it's all just fun and games and don't even think about consequences until they land in their lap.
It would be quite ignorant to think libertarian-minded students care nothing about themselves and feel no responsibility to those around them. Libertarians (that's a small 'l') only reject legal responsibility for those around them. Of all my friends, the so-called "libertarian-minded" of them are probably the most compassionate and responsible. They would certainly consider themselves personally responsible for any actions taken by their friends while within their sphere of influence.
As for an anti-alcohol protest, it would be entirely ineffective and completely dismissed as feel-goodery banter staged by the likes of George Belitsos.
Individuals, institutions and "power arrangements" (what does this refer to?) have absolutely nothing to do with students who binge drink — students are going to binge drink so long as it is acceptable, and the only way it will become unacceptable is if — and I hate to sound like Jon Shelness, because he's a wacko 99% of the time —peer culture dictates it.
Furthermore, the individual is ultimately responsible. The Shanda Rae Munn case is a prime example — she was, in fact, provided alcohol underage. But what did that have to do with her driving drunk and striking Kelly Laughery with her vehicle?
The fact is, it was Shanda Munn that made the choice to drink and drive, no one forced her to sit in the driver's seat, start her car or engage the transmission. In fact, she was offered an opportunity to stay at the apartment complex. She made an active and irresponsible choice not to do so.
If you'd like to make a case that anyone who profits — because profit is such an evil idea — off of anyone else's stupidity or lack of foresight, you're going to have to explain how you won't destroy our country by equally pursuing junk food companies that allow us to become obese, credit card and loan companies that allow us to take on massive amounts of debt, car companies that allow us to drive over the speed limit and cause an accident and universities with beautiful but dangerous lakes for us to drown in.
Finally, this problem is much larger than ISU and its student body — which you so poignantly point out as being the protagonist of this alcohol problem. Iowa City is no different, nor is any other similar college town.
Thank you again for your feedback, and I hope that if you still feel passionately even after my response, you write a letter to the editor for regular publication.
Gott:
Power arrangement = Football + tailgating + alcohol
Power arrangement = Alcohol sales + YSS + City of Ames
Power arrangement = Board of Regents + students + alcohol
Power arrangement = Welch Ave businesses + alcohol + Ames City Council
Power arrangement = YSS + alcohol + treatment-grant funding
Gott, don't be such a dope.
Or how bout we be somewhat responsible?
Nope, better just take it all away, and protect us from ourselves! We have to grow up sometime, and everyone has to find the pitfalls of life for themselves. Sometimes people die. It's tragic. Its also called Darwinism. If you go and do something stupid enough to kill yourself, why should everyone else be accountable for it? Not only do some ISU students need to get over themselves, some of these "OMG alcohol!!!! Bad!!!!" types need to get over themselves too. No one is that holy and pure, we all do stupid stuff at some point in our lives for one reason or another, and sometimes we just get the shaft. That's life. Deal with it.
You ask all these questions about fighting back. First and foremost, students don't want to fight back. We like the bar. 90 percent of us enjoy it responsibly. The 10 percent that are jackasses shouldn't ruin it for the rest of us. Some of us even go to the bar to socialize, and not drink! Oh noes!!!!!
Your statement about taking care of your friends is also BS. I don't know if you ever went to the bar with your friends, or if you even have friends, but people take care of each other. You may call it lame if you must, but it isn't any lamer than your suggestions to take all the alcohol away so we cant hurt ourselves. Better make sure ISU provided power outlet covers so we don't stick forks in our power outlets, and we better make sure that we don't get into those cleaning supplies... Dont forget violent video games, r rated movies, and porn. Better get those gone too! Oh, and cigarettes! Shall I go on?
You can tell someone a million times about the side effects of anything, but they need to find out for themselves. Its the way our parents learned, and they seemed to survive. Quit trying to baby the student body.
Gott- I don't read your articles much, but for the most part, well done.
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