I want to say a few words about the video that we’re going to watch today uh when we don’t have class in 100 Thomas because I’m out of town the stream team uses one of the hundreds of videos of past classes as material for the day so
I am out of town and hence we’re not live but the video that you’re about to watch is actually from another class one that often meets before soci 19 in 100 time and on this particular day that this video was recorded our team arrived early to capture footage of that class
Because we thought it was important I was in the audience so we’ve been waiting or wanting to show this video uh of two Socia 19 students because it’s relevant for all students at the University it’s the story of the death of Tim pza a fellow Penn State student As Told by his
Parents Jim and Evelyn Piaza Tim tragically died as a result of a deadly mix of hazing alcohol and the neglect of the young men who should have been looking out for him so first I want to say something to my current students you might imagine that you’d never find yourself in the
Situation that Tim and the fraternity members were in and that this would never happen to you but what we know about group think and group pressure is that this can happen to just about anyone for those of you who are watching and who are adults what happen to Tim
Can happen to any young person as much as universities try to provide G rails to young adults who are going to test limits while they’re here we sometimes fall short we can’t police every moment of every student’s life nor does anyone want us to drinking is such
A large part of the US college experience and students are adults after all that the best we can do is provide guidelines enforce a growing list of rules and apply penalties and punish those students who break those rules of course not all students drink and the majority who do manage to drink
Responsibly most of the time and some all of the time and I should add that the students who don’t drink are very often turned off and angry at having to engage with the drinking culture and while the events that took place in this video happen in a fraternity house those are spaces that
Are monitored by the university and fraternity and sorority students have to participate in alcohol awareness seminars it’s actually the off campus Gatherings that are not sponsored by or connected to Greek life that can actually be most problematic I can’t say Enjoy the video but I will say that if you know somebody
Who’s headed off to college in the next few years you might consider having him or her watch it we’re fortunate enough to have Jim and Evelyn Piaza here today as most of you know uh they are the parents of Timothy Piaza whose life was cut short due
Largely in part to an alcohol fueled initiation ritual at the beta thigh high fraternity house here on campus just 2 years ago on February 4th 2017 uh and because this is a class where we talk about alcohol and as you all know we’re usually talking about just how people use alcohol over the
World I’ve told you that as the class as we get closer and closer to the end of the semester we’ll start focusing more on us cultures College drinking sexual assaults and all of that the Dark Side of alcohol and what it can do and so they’re here today and I’m thank you so
Much for coming um so let’s give him a let’s give him a welcome um first we just want to thank everybody for uh for coming to hear us today um we normally make presentations throughout the country and normally they’re about hazing um but uh when the
Professor asked us to uh to come here to talk about alcohol I said look we’re not alcohol experts although we learned a lot more about it over the past two years than we would ever wish we knew um but we felt compelled because it is Penn
State and there is a special place for us here at Penn State and and we want a great college experience for everybody so we figured what the heck we’re going to we’re going to give this a try and and see how we can do um how many people here are
Seniors so Tim would have been a senior and he would have graduated this year did anybody anybody know Tim okay um so what we’re going to do is we’re going to try not to make the about hazing as I said although hazing is going to come in a little a little bit
Here and there um we’re going to talk a little bit about Tim what happened to him um the effects of alcohol and the misuse of alcohol and then some things that we’re going to ask you to walk away with and and and hopefully do for us do
For yourself do for your friends to keep things a little bit safer so with that I’ll turn it over okay so I just want to tell you a little bit about Tim and tell you the kind of person that he was he was an amazing person with an incredible
Sense of humor he was shy until he got to know you and then he was larger than life he was smart athletic loved n Netflix and video games and he kind of had his life figured out he was going to major in mechanical engineering so he could have a career designing
Prosthetics go to grad school marry his high school sweetheart eventually and just have fun with his brother and friends so this is a picture of us at the uh Rose Bowl in January of 2017 uh for those of you that remember the Rose Bowl was on January 2nd that
Year because it fell on a January 1st fell on a Sunday and we competed with the NFL January 2nd happened to be our anniversary as well anyway when uh Penn State beat Wisconsin in the Big 10 championship game Tim uh texted us and said hey uh I’d really like to go to the
Rose Bowl and I was like all right well it’ll be a lot of money but you know it’s California it’ll be a good break we’ll go for a nice week vacation you guys are on break and he said well we can’t really do that um I said well why
Not and he said well December 31st is New Year’s Eve I have to be with Caitlyn I need to spend time with her um she’s at another school I can’t leave her alone on New Year’s Eve and I said okay I get that so we’ll just we’ll pack on
The time on the back end and he said well I can’t do that either and I said well why not and he said because I have this internship and they’re going to need me back at work and meanwhile this kid between his freshman and sophomore year I don’t know how much he really
Need an intern but I got to be back by Wednesday I was like so wait a second so you want to fly out on on Sunday the day after New Year’s Eve so January 1st and you want to basically fly home on Tuesday that doesn’t give us a lot of
Time in California it’s going to be very expensive and he said yeah I’d like to do that um and he wasn’t a kid that asked for very much so I went along with it it cost way more money than I would have liked to have spent but it’s the
Best money I ever spent because that was our last picture together as a family Tim was a part of his girlfriend’s family he was the big brother to Caitlyn’s younger brother and sister and he was there for them if they needed him or wanted him for anything he
Was loved trusted and appreciated more than he knew they were and are still devastated by his death and Tim was a big guy who took on the role of protector of his friends or of anyone who needed it he was a great friend brother and boyfriend he brought likeness to any room making
People smile and laugh my favorite picture is the one to the right that to me is pure contentment they truly were perfect for each other so you know one of the reasons we’re we’re talking about Tim so much um is because Tim is just like all of you
He could be any one of you any one of your siblings any one of your friends so as we go through this next part of it think about it being you or a friend of yours or a cing of yours um we want you to feel it because hopefully when you
Feel it you will make better decisions going forward so let me set the stage um as to what happened to Tim on February 2nd 2017 which was 30 days after the rad poow um Tim received a text message telling him to report to his fraternity
House by 9:30 p.m. we’re in khakis in a blazer he was told not to be late and that they were going to get him up once he got to the house he and the other pledges were greeted with a small ceremony and they were handed a handle L
Vodka and were told that they had to finish it before moving on simple math would tell you that on average each pledge had about three and a half shots in a matter of minutes after finishing the handle they were lined up behind the door and one by one they were allowed
Through the door where they encountered a drinking obstacle course with several stations which included beer shotguns wine bag stations V more vodka a beer pong Challenge and and other other drinks along the way um they’re being screamed at and pushed and more beer chugging uh was happening as that was going
On and then the the obstacle course was followed by a so-called celebratory event in in the basement of the fraternity house where the pledges were handled more vodka handed more vodka I should say more wine bags and beers to drink um you know it was it’s interesting and that it it was captured
On video it’s the only time as far as we know in history that the the whole situation like this was was captured on video which is why it’s played out nationally so much um but anyway so after all this uh after all this happened somebody brought Tim upstairs
Because they knew he was noticeably drunk um and it was about 11:00 at night uh problem is they left him alone um so he actually tried to leave the house and and get out the front door but he couldn’t figure out how to open the door to the
House um so then he went back towards the uh basement of the house and he fell down the stairs and uh he was unconscious at the bottom of the stairs his head was was tilted and and um arched against the the bottom of the stairs four guys were seen carrying him
Up his body was limp and they threw him on a couch throughout that night they uh they kind of threw beer on them they slapped them they punched them they threw shoes at him um I guess figuring they would get him up there were some people that knew he
Was seriously hurt and they tried to get the others to call for help uh but no one called for help um in fact uh one person was essentially assaulted and thrown against the wall I’m sure it’s not news you probably have heard about it um and was told he better
He better not uh call for help and you better just shut up so long story short nobody called for help for Tim um he vomited and and and uh was was having convulsions um throughout you know a good portion of the night and then finally most of the uh well
Actually everybody else went to bed or left the house and they left him downstairs by himself to I guess sleep it off um during the course of the night Tim came in and out of coherency uh he walked around the house he fell down a bunch more times um then
He went back back to the basement steps and that’s really the last time anything was seen of him in the video he was found the next morning um unconscious uh his body was stiff um fetal position uh very difficult to move his his open his fingers or his hands move
His limbs um They Carried him back upstairs and for about 45 minutes they talked about all right well what do we do now this is clearly a problem um I think one of the quotes is uh he looked dead um but they waited 45 more minutes um finally they called 911 uh
911 came they never told 911 about the fall um about any of the injuries uh they just said he had he had been drinking a bit uh so then he was Tak it to the hospital and uh from there I will let my wife take
It so who here has a brother or sister close in age to you close enough to be in college at the at the same time if not consider your best friend and consider that you’re both going to the same college now close your eyes and imagine that your brother’s pledging of
Fraternity and it started last night you get a call from your brother’s roommate saying he didn’t come home last night and that’s not like him he always comes home you decide something’s wrong and call the hospital to see if he’s there they say yes there’s been an accident
Come right away you rush to the hospital and see your brother on life support neck brace bruises and blood on his body and head eyes half open the doctor tells you it’s bad that he has a subdural hematoma which is bleeding in his brain his spleen is ruptured he has a
Punctured lung and he needs a blood transfusion because as it turns out 80% of his body’s blood is in his abdomen you have to call your mom to tell her that the doctor’s going to call but that your parents need to come right now you tell her what little information you
Know that it was the first night of pledging and that he fell down the stairs they need to metav vacum to a trauma Hospital one and a half hours away Hershey Medical Center you for for neurosurgery immediately you talk to him even though he’s unconscious you tell him to hang in
There that you are proud of him and that you love him a tear rolls down his cheek you think he heard you and then they take him away now picture your mom and dad getting that phone call as well as the call from the ER doctor the doctor says he’s a
Very sick boy but they don’t understand what he’s hinting at that their son is dying it doesn’t click both Mom and Dad have to drive 45 excruciating minutes to get home to pack bags and then drive over 2 hours to get to the hospital where he’ll be having
Surgery your dad says this better not have anything to do with that fraternity and your mom tells him it was the first night of pledging they call the police to find out what’s happened there’s not a lot of information but they say he fell down the steps once maybe
Twice they get to the hospital and feel sick when they see the helicopter still sitting outside they Rush In And have to wait in the surgical waiting room finally someone comes to take them to surgical ICU to meet with the surgeons it turns out this man is a chaplain but
They don’t know why a chaplain was sent to get them it doesn’t click in a small room a surgeon and a nurse tell them that their son’s brain injury is nonrecoverable they feel the world stop another surgeon comes in and says that once the skull was removed to release
The pressure on the brain the brain kept swelling outside of the skull and that this is considered brain death they try to comprehend what’s happening he’s brain dead how can this be he’s still on life support is there any any hope for Recovery no they have tests to prove
Brain death but they can’t be done because of his other injuries you get a ride with your roommate to the hospital and find out how bad it is from your parents you try to be the strong one his girlfriend comes with her dad they have to tell her
That the boy she loves is brain dead you all cry together then you finally get to see him the Only Skin showing is his shoulders he’s covered with blankets to keep him warm but his body won’t warm up his head is covered with a White Gauze stocking cap to cover the bandages
From having his skull removed to release the pressure on the brain from the bleeding and he’s got bruises and swelling on his face he’s on a ventilator there are IVs everywhere and machines monitoring his oxygen level and body temperature they need to put chest tubes in his lungs because his oxygen
Level is dropping they think he ask irated on vomit the doctors and nurses tell you that they are doing everything they can but that it’s just a matter of time he’s going to go into cardiac arrest the organ donor person is talking to you about donating his kidneys the only undamaged
Organs now you have to decide all of you whether to resuscitate him when he goes into cardiac arrest potentially breaking ribs in his already battered body only to know that he will go into cardiac arrest again or do you let him go into cardiac arrest
And die so they can take him into an operating room to harvest his organs or do you turn the machines off now in an operating room and let him go so they can Harvest his organs immediately you your parents his girlfriend and her dad decide to turn the machines off but he
Codes before you can tell the doctors and they resuscitate him as you watch from the hallway a nurse pulls your mom forward and tells her to kiss her baby goodbye he goes into cardiac arrest again and you all let him go you and the 10 medical personnel in the room who
Look at you with sad eyes and there it is he’s dead it’s 1:23 a.m. a day and a half ago he was alive and happy how did this happen how did we get here what happened at that fraternity house this doesn’t make sense he was a good kid he
Wasn’t a risk taker he wasn’t a drinker he was a good student he had a longtime girlfriend who he was planning a future with he had great friends and roommates he had plans for his future at school and for his career what happened he was an amazing person who was hazed with
Alcohol and then ignored tortured and left to die because the fraternity didn’t want to get in trouble think about this being your loss think about this being your pain think about having a funeral having your brother cremate it and having to watch your mom put his earn in a niche at the
Mausoleum think about you losing your best friend your only sibling why because he was hazed with alcohol everyone’s lives are forever altered and there will always be this hole in your heart because he was hazed got serious hurt and no one was willing to do the right thing and call for help
Because they didn’t want to get in trouble so a couple of things I I want to mention um I know I mentioned uh the the passing of the the Vodka handle um and three and a half drinks in just a matter of minutes um throughout the
Night it it was determined that uh on camera Tim had about 18 drinks in less than 90 minutes uh you’ll see in a bit that that is just out of control levels of drinking and again we talk about it because what happened then that is direct result of alcohol um the other
Point I want to make is you know we talk about fraternity and we talk about hazing but we are not anti-greek life um we just again we go around the country talking to fraternities and sororities to try to make things safer um so for those of you that are in Greek life this
Is not an attack on you um so you know alcohol obviously you guys have learned a lot about it over the the course of uh this semester um you know it’s it’s it’s often used recreationally um it uh it could lighten your mood it could relax you it could decrease
Anxiety I mean I’ll have a drink uh you know I’m not uh I’m not immune from it so I will have a drink um in small doses uh it you know it certainly can relax you and need your tensions but that’s also accompanied as you drink more and
More it reduces your inhibition so your your your ability to stop yourself from doing something that you know you shouldn’t um is kind of diminished um your coordination kind of falls off your reaction time to things falls off all of which puts you at risk which is why
There’s drunk driving rules and and uh even I believe riding a bicycle um when you’re drunk is is against the law some of the other uh social effects of of alcohol use and abuse or unprotected sex pregnancies um sexually transmitted diseases date rape um these are prevalent things on a college campus up
To 2third of the date rape cases involve alcohol as I said it could change your behavior it changes the way you think it it can make you loud it can make you belligerent um offensive uh cause you to get into fights um it will just change
The way you interact with people um if you drink too much alcohol um there’s there’s situations where you can end up being in a in a place where you become a victim um because you put yourself in the wrong place everybody I am sure has heard
About the the young girl from New Jersey uh that went to the University of South Carolina who had been out partying at 2:00 in the morning she called for an Uber she got in the wrong car and uh she got killed that happens that’s reality these these things can happen from
Improper use of alcohol and that’s why we’re here today um so we encourage everybody to to drink in moderation um you know a low level of of drinking is is okay I mean obviously there’s underage drinking rules we’ll talk about that in a second um but you
Know we’re not here to preach that what we’re suggesting is is is mod moderation and it once you start deviating from moderation you you make yourself susceptible to alcohol abuse and addiction um individuals should should limit their alcohol intake to no more than four drinks per day or 14 per week um that’s
For men and for women in uh those that are over 65 should have no more than three drinks a day and seven weekly um once you go beyond that you start crossing the line of are you getting into the abuse area in college look we’re we’re we’re realistic we know Penn State has
Somewhat of a reputation as as a party school as well um you know there there’s a higher risk of uh of abusive drinking and you know hopefully those of you that that thought of taking this class think twice about that um but you know on a college campus uh abuse of alcohol puts
A higher risk of of hazing situations not only in fraternities but in sports groups and and marching bands and clubs and spirit groups and and all that and also increases the likelihood of sexual assault as I said College this was an interesting fact college students spend more money
On alcohol generally than they do in their textbooks and I know how much textbooks are because I’m I’m still paying for textbooks so um we’ve also learned about half of college students who drink consume alcohol through binge drinking um that’s somehow invogue um and and it it should not be um
And then one in four college students experience negative acade academic consequences from drinking so again there’s impacts to you and then you know then we get into alcohol abuse and uh disorder alcohol use disorder um that comes with drinking alone um it could result in problems at school at work um
You’ll have cravings for alcohol and if you do that’s when you need to start seeking help um if you start feeling with withdrawal symptoms from from drinking alcohol uh you could have financial problems because again you’re spending a lot of money on alcohol instead of food um you know your
Schoolwork and other things you could have health problems it damages your liver and other organs um if you start lying about how much you’re drinking you need to step back and think why am I lying why am I not telling the truth about how much I’m drinking it’s because maybe there’s a
Problem um and then as we well know alcohol can kill um about 1,800 college students uh die from alcohol related injuries every year each year approximately 5,000 people under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking this includes about 1,900 deaths from car accidents 1,800 homicides uh 300
Suicides and hundreds of other deaths to due to accidents like Falls Burns drownings I know people who uh we live near the Jersey Shore um who have gotten drunk and thought it would be cool to go swimming at night at the Jersey Shore and never made it
Out their thinking was impaired it’s not a good idea to go into the ocean at least in New Jersey where there’s heavy waves and undertoe when you’re drunk and it’s and it’s light it’s dark out and people can’t see you so we ask you to take that into
Consideration also um a lot of deaths are just a result of alcohol poisoning because people don’t know how much they took in or asfixiation they swallowed their own vomit so use of hard alcohol that that seems to be you know the alcohol of choice um especially as it relates to to
To hazing situations most of the deaths that occur as a result of hazing situations are from alcohol we usually have a slide up with all the deaths that have occurred over the past uh 20 years or so and most of almost all of them are alcohol related and there’s a lot of
Names on that on that list um you know mixing is another common situation especially uh in coerced type of situations where individuals are are given um all different types of alcohol um you know hard alcohol beer wine first of all they all interact with each other
Um and normally it will make you sick to your stomach but also you don’t really know then how much you’re drinking because you don’t know uh you know did you have an amount of wine which is considered one drink or two or three drinks did you have a shot that is
Considered one drink two or three drinks so you really don’t know when you start mixing all these alcohols how much you’re having um and then there’s the quantity I mean when you’re using handles and wine bags and um chugging from a keg and things like that you really don’t know
How much you’re taking in um we’ll see on on tables in in a little bit uh what you know how your blood alcohol con uh concentration goes up and and how it comes down but um you know the the important thing that I want everybody to walk away with binge drinking like it
Seems to be in Vogue but it’s not a good thing to do you’re putting yourself at risk your friends are being put at risk your siblings are put at risk we don’t want anything to happen to any of you your friends or your siblings like would happened to our
Son um the other thing is that alcohol abuse is often a gateway to uh to other abuse and addictions as well and again we we would like to to see that stop the Nic just recently um put a ban on uh hard alcohol the North American inter fraternity
Conference they did did that because they realized that most of the deaths and and harmful situations are created from from hard alcohol um so it’s important to to to to be mindful of how much intake you have when you’re drinking um a high number of college student
Situations that end up in the hospital are are as a result of binge drinking so again we ask you to be mindful of that so this is a chart just to show you what a standard drink size is so for a beer
It’s a 12 O beer a glass of wine is 5 oz a cooler and I don’t know how often wine coolers are in Vogue anymore they were years ago maybe not so much now but that’s 12 oz um a shot is 1 and 1/2 oz and
Spirits like a 1 and 1/2 o um the the alcohol content is also like a beer is 4 to 5% cooler 4 to 5% wine 10 to 12% a shot and Spirits are 40% alcohol which translates to 80 proof and it’s customary well customary beverage serving sizes in restaurants
And bars don’t necessarily conform to standard drink sizes so a mixed cocktail for example may contain the alcohol of three different standard drinks so you’re getting a lot of alcohol at one point and then there’s grain alcohol and I know that this was big in college when
I went to college and I remember hearing about you know grain alcohol punch and a trash can and grain alcohol is a clear liquid with no color smell or taste however it does have a harsh aftertaste according to Consumers it can burn the throat and even lead to coughing um sometimes grain
Alcohol is purified to the point that it’s used as rubbing alcohol so you’re essentially drinking rubbing alcohol uh a popular brand of grain alcohol is called Everclear and it’s 95% alcohol content which is 190 proof it is one of the purest and most potent alcohol beverages available it’s so
Dangerous that some states have outlawed its sale and consumption and just as a side note um max Grover died from hazing uh September 2017 after Tim and we are friends with his parents now and what they gave him was something called diesel which was 190 proof and they made him chug
Diesel at his time of death the day later when they took his BAC he was like 495 and that was after he was already dead so that just goes to show you that you need to stay away from grain alcohol because it is just dangerous
So like I said Ever Clear is more than twice the proof of most standard hard liquor the liver processes about one serving of alcohol an hour binge drinking is four to five servings of alcohol in a 2hour period with around two servings of alcohol consumed per
Hour the liver gets backed up and more alcohol enters the bloodstream so if one shot of Ever Clear leads to about a 8% BAC three servings can cause alcohol poisoning and this just shows you various BAC levels and what the effects are on you and a BAC stands for blood or
Breath alcohol concentration it’s the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream or on one’s breath and so if you have three to four drinks in an hour you most likely will be over the legal driving limit and it will probably take 5 to 6 hours for your
Body to process that and get back down to 0% B four to six drinks the brain begins to experience the effects of alcohol judgment and decision-making abilities are impaired person’s reaction times will get slower they’ll feel liad woozy but the person’s likely to remember events 8 to n drinks it’s much
Worse reaction times are very much slowed speech slurs Vision may change you might have double vision loss of focus and a hangover is likely to set in a 10 to 12 drinks coordination is severely impaired and the risk of an accident or personal injury is very high so taking that back
To Tim they served him 18 drinks in an hour and a half that’s this is just pointing out to you how bad it can be more than 12 drinks alcohol poisoning is likely breathing heart rate and your gag reflex can all change and alcohol is absorbed through the stomach lining it’s absorbed
Directly into the breast the bloodstream food will slow down the absorption as well as diluting alcohol with uh water or juice but if you mix it with something carbonated or drink it straight you will absorb it faster and doing a BAC calculator you can find them online I guess it’s a
Formula that they didn’t want to explain but um just for example a male who is 200 lb who drinks something 80 proof which would be vodka and has five drinks in an hour that is a .11 BAC and it will take 7 hours to get back down to a
Zero and then this B chart is used for estim estimation so just to look at the side the number of drinks it’s broken out male and female and the top is body weight and the number of drinks is actually a poor measure of intoxication because the variation in physiology and
Individual alcohol tolerance and the variation exists with with respect to body weight sex and body fat percentage uh generally men can handle alcohol better than women and it’s because women are usually smaller have more body fat and have a lower total body water content than men just a little comment about BAC a
Little anecdote um a few weeks ago a partner of mine flew up from Atlanta he was in town visiting and he called me up he came over our house uh and we opened up uh some wine and we were having wine as I said I I have drinks um so we were
Drinking some wine and I don’t know we probably got to talking about Tim and and everything that happened with him and I had remembered that uh my wife had bought me this this keychain it was a BAC um IND Ator never used it never had
The need to use it so we actually broke it out um as we were drinking the wine and we blew into it at at different stages of the night and at one point I realized you know what my friend who wasn’t staying with us can’t drive home
Um and it wasn’t that he was showing terrible signs of intoxication or anything like that but he had clearly too much to drink to drive so he ended up having somebody come pick him up um so your your BAC goes up uh very quickly and um you know you need to be mindful
Of that especially when you’re when you’re drinking a lot very quickly um your BAC is going to is kind of go up not as quickly as you intake it so if you have six drinks in in in a matter of minutes um or you know even 15 minutes
Um say six shots your BAC is going to continue to rise over time um and then how do you get the alcohol out of your system well that’s that’s your metabolism and and your metabolism is going to break down the alcohol um the alcohol is metabolized or broken down
Out of the body at a rate of 0.016% per hour it doesn’t matter if you’re 64 or 46 if you drank red wine or diesel or whatever else your BAC is going to reach a certain level no matter no matter how it got to that level your your body’s going
Going to need time to break it down um and remove it from your body um people try countless ways to eliminate the intoxication to eliminate the alcohol such as uh um drinking coffee um it’ll make you feel more awake but it doesn’t get you more sober your BAC stays the
Same um eating food drinking a bunch of water um exercising none of that is going to make you more sober it may make you feel a little different you are still going to be as intoxicated you are still going to uh make the bad decisions
Um so don’t think you could uh you know drink water or drink coffee to sober yourself up you could end up going to bed at night and wake up intoxicated in the morning um and there’s just nothing that you can do about it um your your body can essentially get rid of one
Drink per hour um otherwise you know the the alcohol is waiting its turn to eliminate itself from your body so again be mindful of that when you when you hit it hard and when you pregame your blood alcohol content is going up quickly but it’s not
Going to break down as quickly as it went up so the effects of the abuse of alcohol and binge drinking number one you drink heavily you’re going to have a hangover and it feels terrible for anybody who ever has one headache sensitive to lights sound nauseous maybe vomiting I don’t know if
Anything can make that feel better either anybody here ever have a hangover yeah thank you for being honest um and then it can also lead to depression because alcohol is a depressant you may think that it makes you feel feel good at the time but it depresses the whole body so after a
Certain point you may reach a level of anxiousness and sadness and emotion you also have an increased risk of injury you can fall and incur a traumatic brain injury that could be undiagnosed and masked because of the perceived effects of alcohol and as well as damaging your organs so in Tim’s case
They fed him all these drinks and then he fell which was a logical result of having so many drinks and then they pretended like maybe pretended isn’t the good word but they said well how did how were we to know we thought he was just drunk well he did fall down
The steps and was unconscious so you have to be aware that these are results that can happen for you or anybody around you vomiting is really too much poison in the body you can have severe dehydration from vomiting too which can lead to dangerously low blood pressure
And a fast heart rate and for me vomiting is like my kryptonite I’m good with an open wound nose bleed I can handle that tell me you feel like you’re going to throw up and I lose feeling in my arms so I was one of these people
That I would not even drink to that point of feeling sick because I didn’t want have to make Bargains with God not to throw up um now I’m going to reverse blacking out and browning out just because blacking out says so much so blacking out does not mean that a person becomes
Unconscious like falling asleep and unconscious isn’t is not falling asleep by the way instead people continue to interact you could do routine things you can and you can continue to drink people who black out may drive themselves home engage in sexual encounters destroy property spend too much money uh choose other risky behaviors
And people who are blackout drunk are more likely to physically injure themselves they’ve been known to walk home brush their teeth eat meals go through normal behaviors but they don’t remember these behaviors because their brain doesn’t move those experiences to memory once the person begins to sober
Up the brain will begin to process memories normally again but if blackouts become a common occurrence the brain may have a harder time developing memories and retaining them so heavy drinking can basically cause irreversible brain damage and it is possible to pass out while experiencing a blackout a person who’s exhibiting
Unusual risky Behavior or who passes out while drinking needs medical attention to prevent alcohol poisoning and 911 should be called experiencing a blackout after drinking does not mean that a person has a substance abuse problem but it does mean that they drank more than their body could process over the course of a
Day or an evening people who often complain about memory loss or blacking out after drinking are more likely to have alcohol use disorder indicated by the fact that they consume alcohol on a regular basis not that they experience blackouts however people who black out frequently from drinking too much are
Also likely to have a higher tolerance to alcohol so their BAC will often be higher than a 0.15 when they experience a blackout but people with a higher tolerance um a BAC of 02 will generally lead to a blackout and this is ex extremely dangerous or life-threatening because alcohol poisoning begins at
Basically three so you’re closer to alcohol poisoning when you’re in a pattern of blacking out your your tolerance goes up and now you’re closer to a dangerous level than you realize some people may experience brown outs and I had never even heard of this until we started researching this while
A blackout is a failure to remember several hours that take place before the person’s blood alcohol content drops a brown out involves failing to remember some events but not all and things may come back to you when somebody suggests something and may trigger the memory alcohol poisoning
Is due to a large quantity of alcohol in the body the individual may suffer seizures due to the amount of alcohol drinking too much too quickly can affect your breathing heart rate body temperature and gag reflex and potentially lead to coma and death and you can consume a fatal dose of alcohol
Before you even pass out so you need to know the signs of alcohol poisoning and it’s a cute little it’s a good little tool on the right hand side um if you suspect that someone has alcohol poisoning even if you don’t see the classic signs and symptoms seek immediately immediate Medical Care and
In an emergency like follow these suggestions if the person’s un unconscious and can’t be awakened breathing less than eight times a minute has repeated uncontrolled vomiting or has seizures call 911 immediately and keep in mind that even though someone’s unconscious or stop drinking alcohol alcohol continues to be released
Into the bloodstream because your body can only process one drink an hour so it’s just sitting there waiting to be absorbed and the level of alcohol in the body continues to rise never assume that a person will sleep off alcohol poisoning when you call 911 be prepared
To to give information if you know be sure to tell the hospital or emergency Personnel the kind of alcohol the person drank and when don’t leave an unconscious person alone and don’t try to make the person vomit either because at that level alcohol poisoning affects the way your gag reflex works and that
Means that someone with alcohol po poisoning can choke on their own vomit and accidentally breathe it back in and aspirate and that can also cause a fatal lung injury however do help someone who is vomiting by keeping them sitting up and if they can’t sit up if they’re lying
Down turn their head to the side to help prevent choking and try to keep the person awake so that they don’t lose Consciousness and alcohol poisoning can lead to death in less than an hour so there’s a procedure that we know um called backpacking how many know what backpacking is yeah backpacking Jan
Sporting um it’s it’s commonplace and it is like the procedure that people use for people who they think have drank too much and for those of you who don’t know it’s when you fill a backpack with heavy books and you put it on somebody’s back so that they won’t roll over onto their
Back and choke on their vomit but the thing is like I said at a certain level of intoxication your body shuts down the epicus doesn’t work the gag reflex doesn’t work so the vomit comes up but it’s not propelled out of the body and you will breathe it back in
And you essentially drown in your own vomit so don’t backpack if you’re thinking about backpacking if you’re checking somebody’s breathing if you don’t if their color of their skin looks blue if you know you’re checking their pulse call 911 I think we’re going to skip the aftermath um some other consideration so
When you’re drinking or when you are giving drinks to somebody else what you don’t know what you don’t think about often is the medications that you or someone else is taking those medications can exacerbate the impact of the alcohol so again be mindful of it um you know
Not knowing one’s limit you know people come into college a lot of them never really drank or if they did it wasn’t very much in in in high school um if you put that person in a position where they are all of a sudden drinking a lot of
Alcohol they’re going to have they’re going to get to that dangerous Point much quicker so please you know be aware of that and be aware of it for yourself as well um again you know failure to make recent decisions um don’t exert peer pressure on others to to drink with
You or to play a drinking game um you know sometimes people like to walk away when they know they’ve had enough but then the peer pressure brings them back in don’t do that you’re putting them at risk um if somebody has family alcoholism in their past or Addiction in
Their past again you need to be mindful of that because that could happen to you or your friends or your or your siblings um don’t drink and drive hopefully that goes without saying I think knock wood that has changed a lot since we were younger um but even if you’re drunk and
You’re you’re walking around campus you could walk into the street and have a car hit you so again it’s important to to be able to keep an awareness about you of of what’s going on around you and then there’s the legal ramifications of of drinking and underage drinking and I’m going to do
This very quick quickly but in Pennsylvania um Furnishing alcohol to a minor is a third degree misdemeanor you don’t want things on like this on your record it could get thrown out of court it could get what is called an ARD which won’t go on your record but a lot of
Cases if you’re Furnishing alcohol to a minor you could get charged with with a misdemeanor which comes with potential sentence in jail um $1,000 fine and then if you do it again and again a $2,500 fine um suspended driver driver’s license for 90 days could go up as you
Continue to go forward and again you’ll have a permanent criminal record um and if you get out of it you only got out of it because you paid an attorney a lot of money you don’t want to spend your parents retirement money um paying attorneys for you because you got out of
Hand uh underage drinking comes with its own consequences um I’m not preaching here you do what you want but um it’s a summary offence um $500 fine for the first offense again driver’s license suspension uh and again something permanent on your record you could get
Out of it if you hire an attorney but again you’re spending your parents money and that doesn’t make sense and then there’s the consequences that come in at the university the university has its own set of consequences that you’ll have to abide by so Pennsylvania now has better
Medical amnesty as as it relates to alcohol so if you believe that well if you’re calling on someone else’s behalf and you believe you’re the first to call you identify yourself and stay with the victim until help arrives both of you both you and the victim will not be
Charged with a crime relating to underage alcohol consumption and the point is you should always air on the side of caution and call for help okay so we’re going to wrap it up um we’re going to skip over something we were going to do but here’s what we ask
Of you um you took this class I don’t know why you took it but it’s actually an interesting class to me um we made the time to come here because we care about you guys um so we we couldn’t leave here without asking something of you so we ask you to obey the
Law um again if you’re going to underage drink we’re not preaching but you know do what’s right be mindful of your own State and that of others um if you’ve had too much cut yourself off if your friend had too much cut them off don’t put paper pressure on them um don’t
Pressure anyone to drink you could be putting them in a dangerous State know the signs and stages of intoxication by all means don’t backpack it doesn’t work um there’s an individual that died at Lafayette University not from hazing um just heavy binge drinking they backpacked him he
Died um don’t let someone sleep it off call for help don’t be a bystander you could save someone life you will be very happy if you did that and I can assure you if you knew you had the opportunity to and you didn’t and somebody died or
Got really hurt you’d be very sad and upset and you don’t want to live with that so thank you very much for your time wow thank you so much um I just wanted to add a couple of things uh that I wrote down in regards to some of the
Stuff you were saying but um talking about how being mindful of the alcohol content of something and how different it is where most whiskies and most spirits that you buy yeah they’re 40% alcohol so they’re 80 proof right um but a lot of them like like wild turkey
Right Wild Turkey 101 that’s 101 Pro that’s 101 proof right so that’s six that’s uh 50 it’s 50% 50% alcohol now the thing is the reason I brought it up is that Andrew coffee yeah which is uh was a student at Florida State um he died the same year uh that Timothy
Did in 2017 and he had he consumed and was required to consume an entire bottle of Wild Turkey 101 now there are 25 shots in a in a bottle and a and a 750 and a in a fifth right a normal bottle there’s 25 shots but that’s 20 that’s 25
Shots of alcohol based on a 40% alcohol an 80 proof this is 100 this is the equivalent he he had the equivalent of 404 shots his blood alcohol 0558 it’s but that’s about I mean drink okay drinking a fifth of anything is a bad idea okay I mean that’s stupid but
The point is this is looking at these alcohol and the same thing with um Grover with drinking the the uh the ever CLE right and so but the another thing I wanted to bring up too um we were also talking about just alcohol rated deaths um and this has nothing to do
With hazing but it has to do with a situation involving lots of alcohol that get out of hand and you end up doing some things that you might not have normally done if you were sober and we don’t know all the details yet but I needed to bring this
Up um so the the the student that got shot and killed in Philly over the weekend Nick Flo he was in this class my God and I just found this out from his good friends that are in the ROC his funerals today I’m not saying he was at falter I
Don’t know what happened I know that they were tailgating and everyone was drinking and things got out of hand and they got into an altercation that’s all we know so far but alcohol was involved and this is one of one of the people in this classroom and I just found that out
Uh on Tuesday so anyway I mean you know I’m not against drinking I just all and this is not and they’re not against Greek life it’s just watch out for each other like just pay a little bit of attention to what’s going on and that really is hard to do when you’re drunk
And I’m not saying don’t get drunk either I’m just saying and like think about things just a little bit differently right that’s all that’s that’s all you know um anyway that’s all I had to add but I would like to open this up to some questions right we have
These wonderful guests that are here and I’m sure some of you have questions so if you do where the Tas are on the edges with uh with Mike do we have anybody that has questions oh we have one right here here I’ll share I
Like um so I was just going to ask do I know that our laws in PA have gotten better for amnesty and stuff like that but um do you think that in some states or even pa uh like the Safe Harbor Law and stuff should be more broad
Protecting more people than just the person who calls and because the way the law is worded in this state if you don’t meet all four of the criteria you and the person that you called for are not protected at all so you have to do all four or it’s no
Bets uh so for example if you’re at an apartment party and someone is you know sick you have to get everyone out of the apartment and all that time that you’re spending before you call the police could be like crucial minutes so um it’s a good question and I
Know that there’s they struggle with with that not only here in Pennsylvania everywhere because then you’re just letting everybody else off the hook but what I can tell you and unfortunately again we spent way too much time with uh prosecutors and University administrators and whatnot if somebody
Makes the call um nobody’s looking to throw a bunch of kids in jail or or you know throw out a bunch of fines maybe they’ll make you take the class you know but um all they want you to do they want somebody to pick up the phone and save
That life and it is very very unlikely although I can’t promise you but it is very unlikely that everybody else in that part part is going to get um ticketed or or you know brought up on a misdemeanor so I get your point but if if that’s going to hold somebody back
From making a phone call to Save a Life think about think about that that’s crazy you don’t don’t be that person yeah I’m wondering how many of you out there would be that person to get in trouble if the out if you knew what the outcome was going to be like with
Timothy if you knew what the outcome was going to be of course there’s no way to know that but you don’t know what you might be stopping right so just and I know it sucks because it’s like you nobody wants to get in trouble right and you’re drunk too and so you’re thinking
I don’t this is a bad decision and sometimes there’s other drugs that are there right you know there might be you know I don’t know from pot to Coke or whatever I don’t know there could be all sorts of stuff there it’s like well we don’t want to get in trouble so we’re
Not going to call just call I mean there’s getting in trouble and there’s dying so I don’t know the police are going to worry about getting the the hurt person to the hospital that’s what they’re really going to worry about not what everybody else is doing yeah and
You also have the blue light system here so you can take the person to the blue light even if you don’t want to make the phone call but you should make the phone call uh would you say that since what happened to Timothy if you think in
General if events like those huge frat parties with lots of binge drinking and hazing and under drinking do you think incidents like those have gotten better since then and they’re happening less and less or have they gotten worse well um so was it yesterday we
Were here no two days ago we were in bellant for uh a sentencing hearing for before the individuals uh in Tim’s case um if anybody’s paying attention three uh got jail time and one got house arrest um but when we were there the detective that that did most of the work
On the case was there and I asked him I said well how are things on campus and he said um it seems like things have calmed down quite a bit they’re not perfect um but they’ve calmed down quite a bit so I’m hopeful that uh people are listening and paying attention um and
Being a little bit smarter I think it’s going to take time to change uh behavior and culture but um I I do think it’s getting a little bit better based upon you know validation from uh from the detective based upon some validation I’ve gotten from president Baron um but
You guys probably know better than me if it’s gotten better and that’s here but already in 2019 there have been two hazing deaths and one more that just happened last weekend that’s under investigation as a potential hazing death from Georgia Tech a football player one of those was because of
Alcohol and forced consumption one was sleep deprivation and we’re thinking the one last week was a physical thing so it’s still happening in terms of hazing and fraternity parties and and initiation hopefully it will slow down which is why schools are having us come and talk to their students they
They want that message to get out well she’s doing that the one thing you you you touched on something and I meant to say it early is is a lot of times when you’re drinking and you’ve had too much and I’ve experienced this in my own life
With some of my uh with some of my own friends um you know you get this bravado about you like you could take on the world and um um may have happened with with the flacko situation and I’m so sorry to hear that you know he was part
Of this class and even this University um but I’ve I’ve been in situations where my friends got this bravado on with with other people and frankly they got their their their butts beaten in um by by people because they just they thought they could take on the
World so it’s not a smart thing especially if you’re intoxicated your reaction time is is slowed down so you know somebody’s throwing to punch at you you’re not going to be able to react to it as quickly yeah yeah sorry um just after everything that happened why aren’t you guys against
Greek life I’m sorry what was that after everything that happened why aren’t we against Greek life why are we against Greek life why why why are you not yeah you want to answer well we could both answer um well it’s first of all hazing is not just Greek life it’s in marching
Bands it’s in spirit groups it’s in sports I mean how many times over the past year have we read about high school sports and apparently in high school because they don’t have hard alcohol at their disposal they’re using things like broom handles and sexually assaulting people um so it’s happening
Everywhere and we’ve seen Greek life work we know people other parents who like the mother of Max Grover she was in a sari loved it was never hazed didn’t even know anything about it um we’ve seen it work we’ve seen good things happen good groups I can see how it
Would be your network for the rest of your life you know these are friends these are contacts for business so it is possible to have a good experience you just need to eliminate The Hazing from that yeah I mean my first reaction was take it down
I’ll be honest with you I wasn’t in Greek life my first reaction was take it down um and I thought about it well you know it be pretty hard for me to take it down by myself but um you know I I am all about networking in especially in a
Business career um it’s so important and I do see the Val the validity of being in Greek life from a networking perspective but but I I’ve spent a lot of time with leaders from from National Greek organizations and a whole lot of time um with the individual who runs a
North American end fraternity conference and the woman who runs a National panelen Conference um and uh you know they’re they’re my strongest allies right now in what we’re trying to do this Crusade we’re going on they don’t want the bad behavior any more than we
Do um so you know I said to them I said look if you screw me I’m going after you but um they have they have far from done that they have been uh so in line with everything we are trying to accomplish because they want the same things they
They want Greek life to thrive and they want people to be safe nobody wants 18 to 21 year old students dying or getting hurt and going to the hospital nobody and these um I mean initiations are important right from from a cultural anthropological standpoint they’re extremely important right it’s a ritual
Or ceremony from when an individual moves from one group to another right there’s a transformation that happens Bar Mitzvah getting your haircut in the military I mean all these things are these are these these rights of Passage that you go through and they’re important and there’s even evidence that
Shows that um there’s a level of what’s called cognitive dissidence that happens in this where people that go through those things together they have a tighter bond with each other because they went through that right and so it makes sense but in initiations don’t have to be life-threatening um all cultures
Throughout the world have some sort of right of passage I mean some of them are as crazy as you could imagine um but there’s a group in venatu that does cliff diving they they dive off these platforms with with rope uh Vines tied around their legs and then you know it’s
Kind of like a bungee cord but it’s not a bungee they do this when they turn 13 I mean this stuff happens all over the world but this is this doesn’t there are different initiations right I mean something has to happen you’re going through a big moment you’re joining a group you’re
Becoming a brother you’re becoming a sorority member you’re I understand but it doesn’t have to be it doesn’t have to be deadly um it just doesn’t and what we’ like to point out is this is a person you’re choosing to be your brother or your sister trust
This is not the way to start off a friendship Is by you know hurting demeaning you know really damaging a person that is not a good way to start a relationship and people who are hazed generally years later they may not remember the names of the people that
They were with in college but they will remember the name of the who hates the crap out of them and resent them for it and we’ve heard about it many stories like that yeah uh what advice would you give to like someone who’s maybe interested in joining fraternity learning um everything that
You’ve learned about what happened to your son good question um well for one thing we’re a big fan of deferred recruitment um I think everybody who just comes right into to college really needs a semester to be on their own and learn how to handle themselves we’ve
Heard of something called the Red Zone which is like the first six weeks and it’s when freshmen go crazy cuz they’ve never been so unsupervised before and you know that’s where they drink and do whatever advice what give them advice okay so so get the clock deferred recruitment
Um like listen to to what you hear like listen to what the conversation is and and you’ll hear who’s bad who’s good who does whatever um go to the Greek life office they’ll be happy to tell you which chapters are not doing well and have bad reports against them if the
School like this one now has a report card um check the report card and see what the violations are um talk to your parents so so the one that I’m surprised you didn’t talk about is if you’re going to join a an organization Greek any any organization and you’re doing it with
Other people make a PCT if they ask us to do something that’s dangerous or that any one of us is uncomfortable with we’re out and you know what that’s okay because they need your money they’re going to have to let you guys go and I don’t care they’ll yell at you they’ll
Tell you you don’t come back all they need your money so if you all walk together um you’ll be back the next day and it’ll be a different feeling so for me that’s the number one thing have a packed when you go into it I want to
Sincerely thank you too uh for taking the time to do this I know it’s never easy um I was a mess over here um I it’s such a powerful message and I don’t know just thank you so much for taking you guys are rocks I mean like to do this [Applause] rocks
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