Responsible student drinking

Students need to be more responsible when they pick up a drink at a weekend party. Students need to be more responsible when they pick up a drink at a weekend party. All students are familiar with the catch phrase "Know when to say when" from the commercials sponsored by beer executives. But recently, several students have dismissed that advice, leading to tragic and even deadly consequences. These lapses in responsibility are occurring at Penn as well. Three Hill House freshmen have been taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania because of over-drinking since the beginning of this year. And several students have endangered themselves by getting into bloody fights on the way home from weekend parties. Students are going to drink -- the fact is irrefutable and irreversible. But when doing so, they need to exercise a degree of responsibility. It is a frightening and disturbing reality that students across the nation have recently drunk so much that their blood-alcohol levels have reached five times the legal limit. College students, who are presumably adults, must realize that drinking to the point of vomiting, comas and even death are not what constitutes a night of partying and good times. And alcohol-induced violence threatens not only the drunk student, but all those around him as well. The simple fact is this: follow the commercial's advice. This University and this nation do not need to lose another college student to the dangerous realities of alcohol abuse.