The Hawk

Issue date: 9/26/07 Section: Features

Inexperienced freshmen drinkers can quickly find themselves in trouble.

Everything looks different when you stare down a toilet bowl-and so does everyone you know.

This was the case for one freshman food marketing major who was invited, during the second weekend of the semester, to a party by her former Orientation Leader and then left to her own devices when she drank too much and developed what she and her friends suspect was alcohol poisoning. As she became increasingly ill and her breath, she asked for help, but was told that she was on her own.

Abandoned by a student leader whom she had trusted and other Orientation Leaders at the party, the student said she was forced, with the aid of her friends, to stumble home and recover on her own.

"I vomited, my breathing slowed," she told The Hawk. "I asked for a ride home, but he wouldn't drive me."

According to students interviewed for this story, it is an unfortunate reality of the St. Joe's campus that some individuals of prominent student organizations, particularly Orientation Leaders and Resident Assistants (RAs), introduce new students to the University's party culture.

Many of these student leaders, who function as role models to the incoming freshmen, misuse the responsibility invested in them as student leaders and guide freshmen into the partying and binge drinking culture, sometimes with dangerous results. While neither reflecting the intentions and aims of the organizations that they represent nor the character of their fellow members, these individuals serve as models for imitation and have a significant role in introducing new students to the St. Joe's party culture.

According to Ellen Trappy, the University's substance abuse counselor and prevention specialist, student leaders function as role models and convey certain expectations; how they act as individuals fosters similar action in they lead.

"These students are selected from the whole community," Trappey said. "This is what we [the University community] want you to emulate."

As such, when student leaders participate in and introduce new students to the University party culture, they are fostering this culture and establishing it as a sort of expectation for new students, Trappey said.

"How you are portraying yourself is what comes across," Trappey said, emphasizing that the actions of role models set far more powerful expectations for new students than any expectations set in words.

Continued...

Page 1 of 5 next >

Article Tools