Despite the number of harmful effects of binge drinking, college students continue to ignore the risks and fail to recognize how serious of a problem it is, said Department of Public Safety Detective CJ McCurty.

McCurty said he believes that binge drinking is a major issue at SU because students either do not understand the negative consequences or they simply do not care.

McCurty added that DPS’s real concern is not stopping people from having fun, but rather keeping students safe from the dangers that can arise as a result of drinking excessively.

“What students don’t appreciate is the connection between getting drunk and kind of losing your ability to make good decisions and what that’s connected to,” McCurty said. “For example, sexual assault, the role that being intoxicated or under the influence plays in that. … Most of the cases the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities sees on sexual assault, either one or both parties are drunk or under the influence.”

He added that binge drinking can also lead to things such as injury and people driving while intoxicated.

Binge drinking can cause physical, mental and emotional harm, said Cory Wallack, director of SU’s Counseling Center, in an e­mail. Wallack said that some of the harmful effects of binge drinking include headaches, loss of coordination, difficulty breathing, distorted vision and hearing, blackouts, alcohol poisoning, depression, anxiety, irritability and relationship problems.

About four out of five college students drink alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol and Abuse. And, in total, 90 percent of all alcohol consumed by people under 21 is through binge drinking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At SU alone, there were 165 reported incidents of “extreme intoxication” during the 2010–11 academic year, according to BeWise, an alcohol awareness and prevention organization on campus.

Wallack said he believes that since binge drinking has been adopted into the norm of college society, students fail to recognize the potentially damaging repercussions it has.

“The effects of binge drinking are harmful at all ages,” Wallack said. “For various reasons though, our culture accepts binge drinking as a normal and expected aspect of college life, which is unfortunate, as I believe that in turn contributes to the problem.”

McCurty said he has seen firsthand just how dire the consequences of binge drinking can be. He said that two years ago, an SU student suffered brain damage as a result of binge drinking. McCurty said he believed the injury happened during a hazing incident as a result of the student joining a club sports team on campus.

“He’s going to be a special needs person for the rest of his life. He was not able to make it back to college here. I think he was a sophomore, or maybe a junior. You know what I mean, from one night of drinking. … That’s what we want to avoid.”

Editor’s Note: Over the past month, The Daily Orange has collaborated with the Department of Newspaper and Online Journalism at Syracuse University on a series of stories relating to alcohol culture on the SU campus. Multiple stories will appear in The D.O. in the coming days.

Published on April 8, 2016 at 8:03 pm