The party is raging.
It's one of the best of the semester, and people are laughing, drinking, smiling. Life is good. The energy in the room is so palpable that the idea of even needing alcohol seems ridiculous, but the crushed Keystone Lights and half-empty Smirnoff bottles are still piling up. In the morning, this will all be a hazy, laughable memory for most, but for one junior, the morning of Dec. 4, 2010 would not find him in his bed in Stonewall, but in a hospital bed at Roger Williams Hospital in Providence, R.I.
John, the 19-year-old, five-foot-ten Roger Williams University athlete, ended practice that night after the dining commons was already closed. Excited to start the night, he skipped dinner and started drinking, despite having only had breakfast that day.
His drink of choice that night was tequila. Pre-gaming in Maple, John had drunk half of the handle himself before he even went out to the party. Once he got to the party in Bayside, he continued to take seven more shots of the tequila.
"I tried to make myself throw up," John said, "because I was like ‘that was the worst decision I could have made' but I couldn't for some reason."
The rest of the night is a blur. John remembers running into a few of friends in the Bayside courtyard and even recalls a memory of slipping in the wet grass in front of one of the Bayside gazebos and hearing people have a good laugh at his foolishness.
Out of the many friends that he saw that night, only one noticed his overly intoxicated behavior and thought that he needed help. The willing friend called for an ambulance to ensure that John would be okay.
His memory of what time he was taken to the hospital is blurry, but friends confirm that it was around 2 a.m. Public Safety and the ambulance showed up around the same time to assess his condition.
"I kind of knew they were going to call the ambulance," John said. "I was blacked out but I was consciously talking to [Public Safety]. I didn't want to get in trouble so I started giving different names and saying I didn't go here."
Once he regained consciousness after arriving at the hospital, he recalls waking up in a foreign place alone, in a hallway and with a low battery blinking on his cell phone. He tried to call one of his friends to let him know he was okay, but the nurses hurried him off the phone.
"I was there for most of the day because they wouldn't let me leave. I was perfectly fine up until a certain point when I just wanted to get out of there."
The nurses made John wait to go home until he was under a certain Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) level. He remembers that he never threw up but spent the night hooked up to an IV drip. Almost 24 hours later, he was allowed to return home using the free taxi service that RWU students are given when transported.
Helping the helpless
For a resident assistant on most any college campus, responsibilities are high to ensure that students not only are safe when going out but that they receive the proper medical treatment if needed. Shannon Fahey, a senior and the Head RA of Bayside, said she finds transporting students one of the scariest things.
"I have some transports that will haunt me forever," Fahey said. "The color of the student's face [where] they literally look purple [and] the ones that scare us so much because they literally do not wake up until they get to the hospital."
Transports are not something to take lightly and Fahey said she and her fellow RAs share this common feeling. Fahey said that some students think that having an ambulance show up at the school is almost fun.
"It is the most disturbing when the students cheer outside when they see the ambulance arrive and simply assume that the student is going to be okay," she said. "I am grateful everyday that I have never had a situation where the student was not okay, but it does not mean that it couldn't happen."
The protocol for RAs anywhere on campus is to first assess the situation and then have Public Safety called. Once they arrive, Public Safety will see if the student needs an ambulance, and then medical attention is given if necessary.
"Over the past couple of years, we have been increasing our numbers of EMTs on the Public Safety staff to assess a student's level of intoxication faster and more efficiently," said David Bixby, a junior and an RA in Cedar One South.
Fahey's first year as an RA was in Willow and since then she has resided in Bayside. Fahey said she has seen a difference between the southern and northern parts of campus because of students' inexperience with drinking.
"I believe south campus has been more active in transporting students," she said. "The first few weeks of college are always the worst because some students have not been exposed to alcohol and are trying things out for the first time. These are the ones that usually do not know their limits and need to be transported."
As a second year RA, Bixby has never had to transport a resident.
"I reinforce the need for safe drinking habits," Bixby said. "As an RA, I've invested a lot of time educating residents on how to drink responsibly and safely if they choose to. I also make clear of the policies that are in place that they need to follow if they choose to drink in the residence halls on south campus."
Both Bixby and Fahey said they believe that since the arrival of the medical amnesty policy on the RWU campus, they have seen positive results.
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