Shot of Reaity: A drinking culture at KU

Slouched into his couch, the University of Kansas senior laughed about his early efforts to make fake IDs for his friends. It sometimes took him four or five attempts to get it right, using a home printer and lamination papers he bought online for 25 cents apiece.

"Now I can make a flawless one on the first time," said the Southeast Kansas senior, who asked to remain anonymous because of the incriminating nature of his actions.

He eventually made a profit by selling knock-off Oklahoma driver's licenses, which don't have a hologram. But he said his initial motivation for making the IDs wasn't for the money; he just wanted to bring friends with him to the Lawrence bars.

"I get to college and I am a lot older than all of my friends," he recalled. "So, when I turn 21 I'm able to go out, but it's not very much fun going and hanging out at the bars by yourself. So I had to devise some way for my friends to come and have fun with me."

In Lawrence, fake IDs often help underage students get alcohol. But not all students go to such lengths. They don't need to. Many find that the easiest access to alcohol comes simply from of-age friends who can legally buy booze for others at liquor stores.

Both means appear evident in the case of Jason Wren, the 19-year-old freshman from Littleton, Colo., who died March 8 after a night of heavy drinking. According to police, Wren used a fake ID to buy margaritas at a local restaurant. Afterward, Wren continued to drink at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house, downing 10 to 12 beers, boxed wine and whiskey before going to bed, said people who were with him that night.

Most KU students don't drink as much on a regular basis as Wren did that night. But with 20 bars and more than 40 restaurants that serve alcohol, Lawrence is known as a drinking town where girls make "shot books" on their 21st birthdays, taking 21 shots and keeping a page for each shot; where guys chug whole beers through beer bongs; where beer pong and other drinking games are commonplace at student parties; and where bar specials on weeknights bring students out in large numbers. These and other factors contribute to a culture that celebrates excessive alcohol consumption.

A 2006 study by the National College Health Assessment surveyed a representative sample of students from 117 colleges, including more than 1,500 KU students. The study asked students whether they had drank five or more alcoholic drinks in a single setting three to five times within the past two weeks. KU students said yes at nearly twice the national average, 21 percent compared with 11 percent.

In the same survey, 47 percent of KU students admitted to drinking and driving within the past 30 days, doubling the national average for the same question of 23 percent.

When asked about driving after consuming five or more drinks, 18 percent of KU respondents said they had, compared with the national average of 4 percent.

Several aspects of college life help create a culture in which students binge drink, often more so than people their age who are not in college. Researchers say these contributors include communal living arrangements such as residence halls and greek housing, the co-mingling of underage and of-age students, increased amounts of unstructured time, and a high number of alcohol ads targeted at college students.

Life on Campus

The smell of day-old Ramen, burnt popcorn and cheap beer permeates the hallways of McCollum Hall. As the University's largest dorm, McCollum houses about 900 students. With so many shared aspects of living, it's impossible for students to avoid interacting with other residents. Card games, movie nights and video games all add to the atmosphere of residence hall life.

A robust social scene is one of the main attractions of life in University residence halls and greek houses. However, a 2000 study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism showed that living in residence halls or greek housing was also one of the main factors that leads to student drinking.

"One of the reasons that we encourage people to live on campus is for socialization," said Diana Robertson, director of the Department of Student Housing. "But hopefully for good, not evil."

About 5,000 KU students live in some form of University housing, either in residence halls, on-campus apartments or scholarship halls. About 2,400 students live in greek houses. Together, these students make up approximately 36 percent of the undergraduate population.

Lindsey Coggins, a freshman from Waterville, Kan., said it was hard to pass up drinking when living in McCollum Hall. She said many McCollum residents drink regularly in the dorm, some every night. Coggins said that despite the rules, it's no problem sneaking alcohol into rooms.

"A backpack, a purse, anything you can find, you can sneak into your room," she said.

Coggins said she and her friends once snuck about $90 worth of alcohol into McCollum in a beer box by disguising it as a gift, complete with wrapping paper and a bow.

"This was within the first couple weeks of school starting, and we were pretty nervous about bringing in alcohol," Coggins said. "So we tried to do the most innocent thing we could think of."

In a 2001 Harvard School of Public Health college alcohol study, research showed that fraternity members were more likely to participate in heavy drinking than their non-fraternity peers, 75 percent versus 49 percent. The study showed that 62 percent of sorority members engaged in heavy drinking, compared with 41 percent of non-greek female students.

All KU fraternities and sororities are privately owned, allowing them to make their own rules regarding alcohol.

Phi Delta Theta is the University's only dry fraternity, meaning alcohol is prohibited. All KU sororities are considered dry.

Jay Wren, Jason's father, has called on Sigma Alpha Epsilon and other fraternities to go dry, or to accept only members who are 21 and older because of what he called the apparent lack of supervision within the SAE house.

SAE has made no announcement to date about going dry.

Jake Gibbs, a senior from Santa Fe, N.M., and member of Sigma Chi, said much of the greek social life is centered on drinking, which can sometimes get out of hand if people aren't responsible. He said, however, that Wren's death should be a wake-up call to all students, not just to members of the greek community.

"It's obviously a problem when you've got kids dying," Gibbs said.

Living in the Sigma Chi house for two years often led Gibbs to drink more than he might have otherwise. He said he drinks less now that he lives off-campus.

According to the 2006 NCHA study, 13 percent of KU students say they don't drink regularly or at all.

Erryn Kindle, a sophomore from Eudora, Kan., is one of them.

He doesn't drink because of what he calls a "bribe." When he was 10 years old, his parents promised him $1,000 if he refrained from drinking until turning 21.

Despite his pledge, Kindle often goes to parties or local clubs. He said new acquaintances are sometimes surprised to find out he doesn't drink.

"I always feel weird when I tell them," Kindle said.

After living in Russia for several years, Jenny Geide said she decided that alcohol wasn't for her. She said she witnessed a lot of excessive drinking, which turned her off from wanting to drink.

"Being exposed to that culture, I saw that I didn't want to live like that," Geide said.

Geide said her Christian faith and guidance from her parents also motivated her to not drink.

"I don't really believe that I should be drinking," Geide said, "especially to get drunk."

She said the choice to abstain from alcohol was made easier because she had supportive friends with similar values.

"My friends and I have tons of fun all the time and drinking is never involved," Geide said. "There's lots to do without going to parties. You just need to find the right friends."

Advertising

Whether it be Bud Light's "Men of Genius" commercials, Jayplay's back cover with weekly drink specials, or brightly colored ads for local bars chalked across campus sidewalks, students are inundated with alcohol advertising.

The NIAAA study identified a high number of advertisements targeted at college students as another factor linked to heavy drinking.

David Jernigan, executive director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, said the alcohol industry glamorized and misrepresented the use of alcohol in advertisements.

"The majority of college students are not getting drunk every weekend," Jernigan said. "But you wouldn't know that from seeing alcohol advertisements."

Jenny McKee, health educator at Watkins' Wellness Resource Center, said she gave presentations to classes about the misperceptions of alcohol use by KU students. McKee often asks classes to guess what percentage of their peers drink.

"It never fails, they always say 99 or 100 percent," McKee said. "But we know that's just not true."

Jernigan, also an associate professor of health, behavior and society at Johns Hopkins University, said underage people are more exposed to alcohol advertising than people of legal age.

"Study after study has found that the more alcohol advertisements people are exposed to, the more likely they are to drink, and to drink heavily," Jernigan said.

Jon Schlitt, sales and marketing adviser for The University Daily Kansan, said the majority of alcohol-related ads ran on Thursdays, because Thursday is a popular night for students to go out.

"Alcohol is a legal product, pending that you are over the age of 21, so therefore we do welcome advertising from our local bars," Schlitt said.

Schlitt said the advertising staff doesn't run ads that promote underage or binge drinking.

"We want our bars to run creative ads, and we want them to get people in the door," Schlitt said. "But at the same time, we want to make sure that they're following the law."

Although Schlitt said alcohol ads were important to The Kansan, he said apartment ads were "the bread and butter" of The Kansan's advertising revenue.

Drinking Scene

The options for students of where, what and how much to drink can sometimes be overwhelming. As in Wren's case, this range of choices can sometimes lead to dangerous behavior.

In 2008, Lawrence Memorial Hospital's emergency room treated 1,526 patients for alcohol-related issues, 273 of which were college students. 365 were treated for alcohol poisoning.

"Drinking in Lawrence is an epidemic," said John Drees, the hospital's community education specialist.

After working the overnight weekend shift as an ER nurse at the hospital, Drees said, he and other hospital staffers had adopted a dark sense of humor.

He recalled a night when a fellow nurse started dancing a jig in the nurses' station while she exclaimed, "I have a sober patient! I have a sober patient!"

He said the joking helped him deal with the situation.

"It's very human, you know, and it actually gets you kind of depressed because you're going, 'How much can this happen?'" Drees said.

McKee said most students don't understand the dangers of binge drinking.

She said the standard definition of binge drinking is consecutive consumption of five drinks for men and four drinks for women. One drink is measured as a one-ounce shot, 12-ounce beer, or a 4.5-ounce glass of wine. McKee said one drink could raise the typical person's blood alcohol concentration by .02 percent. The legal limit is .08 percent.

She said many students she counseled have easily exceeded that amount on a regular basis.

"That seems like pre-gaming to them," McKee said. "That's not what they think binge drinking is."

A popular excuse for binge drinking is tailgating at home football games. The time-honored tradition attracts thousands of fans who barbecue and drink hours before kickoff.

Joseph Weeks, a junior from St. Paul, Minn., said he often woke up with hangovers on game days. But he said he would force himself to drink with his friends, even if he wasn't in the mood.

"If it's a big game, I'll probably drink through the day and night," Weeks said.

A 2007 University of Texas study showed that students consumed more alcohol during college sporting events than they did on Halloween and New Year's Eve, which are typically heavy drinking days for college students.

Capt. Schuyler Bailey, of the KU Public Safety Office, said law enforcement regulated drinking on game days. On an otherwise dry campus, drinking is allowed in the areas surrounding Memorial Stadium from three hours before kickoff until the end of halftime.

"Tailgating is not synonymous with drinking," Bailey said. "There is nothing that says that you have to have alcohol in order to tailgate."

Drees, of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, pointed to drinking games - beer pong, card games, and power hours - as dangerous contributors to binge drinking at the University.

"The real question is: Why aren't we having more deaths?" Drees said.

Bailey said he had witnessed a shift in recent years of students drinking more heavily and going out with the sole intention of passing out.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control estimates that in Douglas County, Kan., about $73 million each year, or $200,000 each day, is spent on alcohol at bars, restaurants, grocery stores and liquor stores. That's enough to buy about 1,000 8-gigabyte iPhones, 33,000 Jimmy John's sandwiches or 80,000 loads of laundry each day.

The Southeast Kansas senior made about 50 IDs, sometimes selling them for as much as $60 to $120. He said he made about $1,250 during the course of two years. Despite the potential for profit, he didn't recommend that anyone else make fakes.

"The risks of that far outweigh the benefits of just having fun," he said. "It's not worth it all."

He said he didn't think fake IDs contributed to underage drinking, because he said most underage students found other ways to get alcohol.

"They're gonna drink whether they have a fake or not," he said.